OF  PRIf.'fif^ 


^  MAR  8  W38 


DTS3 
.  B78S 


C6c  ^imticM  @etfe0  for  "Bible  StuDentst 


EDITED  BY 

Professor  CHARLES  F.  KENT,  Ph.D.,  of  Yale  University, 

AND 

Professor  FRANK  K.  SANDERS,  Ph.D.,  formerly  of 
Yale  University 


l^olume  V 


A  HISTORY 

or  THE 

ANCIENT  EGYPTIANS 


€ht  ^fstotlcal  Series  for  IBMt  StuDents 


Edited  by  Professor  CHARLES  P.  KENT,  Ph.D.,  of  Yale  University,  and 
Professor  FRANK  K.  SANDERS,  Ph.D.,  formerly  of  Yale  University 


IN  response  to  a  wide-spread  demand  for  non-technical  yet  scholarly  and  reliable  guides 
to  the  study  of  the  history,  hterature,  and  teaching  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments, 
and  of  the  contemporary  history  and  hterature,  this  series  aims  to  present  in  concise  and 
attractive  form  the  results  of  investigation  and  exploration  in  these  broad  fields.  Based 
upon  thoroughly  critical  scholarship,  it  will  emphasize  assured  and  positive  rather  than 
transitional  positions.  The  series  as  a  whole  is  intended  to  present  a  complete  and  con- 
nected picture  of  the  social,  political,  and  reUgious  Ufe  of  the  men  and  peoples  who  figure 
most  prominently  in  the  biblical  records. 

Each  volume  is  complete  in  itself,  treating  comprehensively  a  given  subject  or  period. 
It  also  refers  freely  to  the  bibUcal  and  monumental  sources,  and  tc  the  standard  authori- 
ties. Convenience  of  size,  clearness  of  presentation,  and  helpfulness  to  the  student  make 
the  series  particularly  well  adapted  for  (i)  practical  text-books  for  college,  seminary,  and 
university  classes;  (2)  handbooks  for  the  use  of  Bible  classes,  clubs,  and  guilds;  (3)  guides 
for  individual  study;  and  (4)  books  for  general  reference. 


Vols.        I.   HISTORY  OF  THE  HEBREW  PEOPLE. 

1.  The  United  Kingdom.  Sixth  edition.  Charles  F.  Kent,  Ph.D.,  Professor  ol 
8.  The  Divided  Kingdom.   Sixth  edition.         Biblical  Literature,  Yale  University. 

n.   HISTORY  OF  THE  JEWISH  PEOPLE. 

J.  The  Babylonian,  Persian,  and  Greek      Charles  F.  Kent,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of 
Periods.  Biblical  Literature,  Yale  University. 

4.  The  Maccabean  and  Roman  Period      James  S.  Riggs,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Bib- 

(mcluding  New  Testament  Times).  lical    Criticism,    Auburn  Iheological 

Seminary. 

m.    CONTEMPORARY  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTORY. 

5.  History  of  the  Ancient  Egyptians.  James  H.  Breasted,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of 

Egyptology  and  Oriental  History,  The 
University  of  Chicago. 

6.  History   of    the    Babylonians   and      George  S.  Goodspeed,  Ph.D.,  Professor 

Assyrians.  of  Ancient  History,  The  University  of 

Chicago, 

IV.   NEW  TESTAMENT  HISTORIES. 

f.   The  Life  of  Jesus.  Rush  Rhees,  President  of  the  University 

of  Rochester. 

%.   The  Apostolic  Age.  George  T.  Purves,  Ph.D.,  D.D..  late 

Professor  of  New  Testament  Literature 
and  Exegesis,  Princeton  Theological 
Seminary. 

OUTLINES  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  BIBLICAL 

HISTORY  AND  LITERATURE. 

•  •   TkoJ  Eailiest  Times  to  200  A.  D.  Frank  K.  Sanders,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of 

Biblical  Literature,  Yale  Universiry 
and  Henry  T.  Fowler,  Ph.D.,  Pro. 
fessor  of  Biblical  Literature  and  Hi» 
tor"  Rrown  University. 


A  HISTORY 


OF 


8  1938 


THE  ANCIENT  EGYPTIANS 


BY 

JAIVIES  HENRY  BREASTED,  Ph.D. 

Pbofessor  of  Egyptology  and  Oriental  History  in  th» 
University  of  Chicago  ;  Corresponding  Member  of 
THE  RoTAii  Academy  of  Soences  of  Berlin 


WITH  FOUR  MAPS  AND  THREE  PLANS 


NEW  YORK 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Copyright,  1905,  1908,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


All  rights  reserved.  No  part  of  this  book 
may  be  reproduced  in  any  form  without 
the  permission  of  Charles  Scribner's  Sons 


TO 

MY  FATHER 
In  Reverence  and  Gratitudb 


Digitized  by 

the  Internet  Archive 

in  2015 

https://archive.org/details/historyofancientOObrea_0 


PREFACE 


As  works  on  the  early  Orient  multiply,  it  becomes 
more  and  more  easy  to  produce  such  books  at  second 
and  third  hand,  which  are  thus  separated  by  a  long 
remove  from  the  original  monuments  forming  our 
primary  sources  of  knowledge.  As  the  use  of  this  vol- 
ume is  in  a  measure  conditioned  by  the  method  which 
produced  it,  may  the  author  state  that  it  is  based  di- 
rectly and  immediately  upon  the  monuments,  and  in 
most  cases  upon  the  original  monuments,  rather  than 
upon  any  published  edition  of  the  same  ?  For  this  pur- 
pose the  historical  monuments  still  standing  in  Egypt, 
or  installed  in  the  museums  of  Europe  (the  latter  in  to- 
to),  were  copied  or  collated  by  the  author  anew  ad  hoc 
and  rendered  into  English  (see  injra,  p.  445,  B.  Trans- 
lations, BAR).  Upon  this  complete  version  the  present 
volume  rests.  Those  students  who  desire  to  consult 
the  sources  upon  which  any  given  fact  is  based,  are  re- 
ferred to  this  English  corpus.  A  full  bibliography  of 
each  original  monument,  if  desired,  will  also  be  found 
there,  and  hence  no  references  to  such  technical  bibliog- 
raphy will  be  found  herein,  thus  freeing  the  reader 
from  a  mass  of  workshop  debris,  to  which,  however, 
he  can  easily  refer,  if  he  desires  it. 

While  this  volume  is  largely  a  condensation  and 
abridgement  of  the  author's  longer  history,  he  ha'='  en- 


viii 


PREFACE 


deavoured  to  conform  it  to  the  design  of  this  historical 
series  and  to  make  it  as  far  as  possible  a  history  of  the 
Egyptian  people.  At  the  same  time  the  remarkable 
recent  discoveries  and  the  progress  of  research  made 
since  the  appearance  of  his  larger  history  have  been 
fully  incorporated.  The  discovery  of  the  Hittite  capital 
at  Boghaz-Koi  in  Asia  Minor,  with  numerous  cuneiform 
records  of  this  remarkable  people,  and  elsewhere  the 
evidence  that  they  conquered  Babylonia  temporarily  in 
the  eighteenth  century  b.  c,  form  the  most  remarkable 
of  the  new  facts  recently  recovered.*  The  new-found 
evidence  that  the  first  and  third  dynasties  of  Babylon 
were  contemporaneous  with  the  second,  has  also  settled 
the  problem,  whether  the  civilization  of  the  Nile  or  of  the 
Euphrates  is  older,  in  favour  of  Egypt,  where  the  forma- 
tion of  a  homogeneous,  united  state,  embracing  the 
whole  country  under  the  successive  dynasties,  is  over  a 
thousand  years  older  than  in  Babylonia.  We  possess  no 
monument  of  Babylonia,  as  Eduard  Meyer  recently 
remarked  to  the  author,  older  than  3000  B.  c.  The 
author's  journey  through  Sudanese  Nubia  during  the 
winter  of  1906-07  cleared  his  mind  of  a  number  of  mis- 
conceptions of  that  country,  especially  economically, 
while  it  also  recovered  the  lost  city  of  Gem-Aton,  and 
disposed  of  the  impossible  though  current  view  that  the 
Egyptian  conquest  was  extended  southward  immedi- 
ately after  the  fall  of  the  Middle  Kingdom.  Those  fa- 
miliar with  the  other  history  will  also  welcome  the  im- 
proved maps  redrawn  for  this  volume. 

On  the  never-settled  question  of  a  pronounceable, 

*  This  book  was  paged  in  October,  1907,  but  as  the  proof  was 
vinhappily  lost  for  three  months  in  transport  to  Europe,  the  re- 
sults of  the  second  campaign  (summer  of  1907)  at  Boghaz-Koi, 
which  appeared  in  December,  1907,  could  not  be  employed  in 
detail  as  they  might  otherwise  have  been. 


PREFACE 


ix 


that  is  vocalized,  form  of  Egyptian  proper  names, 
which  are  written  in  hieroglyphic  without  vowels,  I  must 
refer  the  reader  to  the  remarks  in  the  preface  of  my  An- 
cient Records  (Vol.  I.,  pp.  xiv.  jj.).  It  is  hoped  that  the 
index  has  made  them  pronounceable.  As  to  the  au- 
thor's indebtedness  to  others  in  the  preparation  of  this 
volume,  he  may  also  refer  to  his  acknowledgments  in 
the  same  preface,  as  well  as  in  that  of  his  larger  history 
— acknowledgments  which  are  equally  true  of  this 
briefer  work.  He  would  also  express  his  appreciation 
of  the  patience  shown  him  by  both  editor  and  pub- 
lisher, who  have  waited  long  for  the  manuscript  of  this 
book,  delayed  as  it  has  been  by  distant  travels  and 
heavy  tasks,  and  the  fact  that  the  mass  of  the  material 
collected  proved  too  large  to  condense  at  once  into  this 
volume,  thus  resulting  in  the  production  of  the  larger 
history  first.  Even  so,  the  present  volume  is  larger  than 
its  fellows  in  the  series,  and  the  author  greatly  appre- 
ciates the  indulgence  of  the  publishers  in  this  respect. 
In  conclusion,  to  the  student  of  the  Old  Testament,  by 
whom  it  will  be  chiefly  used,  the  author  would  express 
the  hope  that  the  little  book  may  contribute  somewhat 
toward  a  wider  recognition  of  the  fact,  that  the  rise  and 
development,  the  culture  and  career,  of  the  Hebrew 
nation  were  as  vitally  conditioned  and  as  deeply  influ- 
enced by  surrounding  civilizations,  as  modern  historical 
science  has  shown  to  be  the  fact  with  every  other  peo- 
ple, ancient  or  modern. 

James  Henry  Breasted. 


BoRDiOHERA,  Italy,  March  2,  1908. 


CONTENTS 


PART  I 
INTRODUCTION 

PAQB 


I.    The  Land  of  the  Egyptians   3 

II.    Preliminary  Survey,  Chronology  and  Docu- 
mentary Sources   14 

III.  Earliest  Egypt   29 

PART  II 
THE  OLD  KINGDOM 

IV.  Early  Religion  55 

V.    The  Old  Kingdom:  Government  and  Society, 

Industry  and  Art  74 

VI.    The  Pyramid  Builders  103 

VII.    The  Sixth  Dynasty:  the  Decline  of  the  Old 

Kingdom  117 

PART  III 

THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM    THE  FEUDAL  AGE 

VIII.    The  Decline  of  the  North  and  the  Rise  of 

Thebes  133 

IX.    The  Middle  Kingdom  or  the  Feudal  Age 

State,  Society  and  Religion     .    .    .  .139 
X.    The  Twelfth  Dynasty  152 


CONTENTS 
PART  IV 

THE  HYKSOS:  THE  RISE  OF  THE  EMPIRE 

PAOB 


XI.    The  Fall  of  the  Middle  Kingdom.  The 

Hyksos  173 

XII.   The  Expulsion  of  the  Htksos  and  the  Tri- 
umph OF  Thebes  185 


PART  V 
THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 

XIII.  The  New  State:  Society  and  Religion  .    .  . 

XIV.  The  Consolidation  of  the  Kingdom;  the 

Rise  of  the  Empire  207 

XV.    The  Feud  of  the  Thutmosids  and  the  Reign 

OF  Queen  Hatshepsut  214 

XVI.    The  Consolidation  of  the  Empire:  the  Wars 


OF  Thutmose  III  223 

XVII.    The  Empire  at  Its  Height  244 

XVIII.    The  Religious  Revolution  of  Ikhnaton  .    .  264 
XIX.    The  Fall  of  Ikhnaton  and  the  Dissolution 

OF  the  Empire  280 


PART  VI 
THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 
XX.    The  Triumph  of  Amon  and  the  Reorganiza- 


tion OF  the  Empire  293 

XXI.    The  Wars  of  Ramses  II  303 

XXII.    The  Empire  of  Ramses  II  314 

XXIII.    The  Final  Decline  of  the  Empire:  Mernep- 

TAH  and  Ramses  III  327 


CONTENTS 


PART  VII 

THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 

PAOB 


XXIV.   The  Fall  of  the  Empire  »    .  347 

XXV.    Priests  and  Mercenaries:  the  SuPREJiACY  of 

THE  Libyans  357 

XXVI.   The  Ethiopl^n  Supremacy  and  the  Triumph 

OF  Assyria  367 

PART  VIII 

THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 

XXVII.    The  Restoration  387 

XXVIII.    The  Final  Struggles:  Babylon  and  Persia  404 

Chronological  Summary  419 

Notes  on  Recent  Discoveries  439 

A  Selected  Bibliography  (including  Abbreviations)  .  .  444 
Index  of  Names  and  Subjects  ,   .  455 

MAPS  AND  PLANS 

Map     I.   Egypt  and  the  Ancient  World  4 

Map     II.   The  Asiatic  Empire  of  Egypt  210 

Map    III.    Thebes  and  Its  Ancient  Buildings  .    .    .  218 

Plan  IV.    The  Temples  of  Karnak  228 

The  Battle  of  Kadesh,  First  Stage  305 

The  Battle  of  Kadesh,  Second  Stage  307 


Map    V.   General  Map  of  Egypt  and  Nubia.  At  the  End 


PART  I 
INTRODUCTION 


I 


THE  LAND  OF  THE  EGYPTIANS 

1.  The  roots  of  modern  civilization  are  planted 
deeply  in  the  highly  elaborate  life  of  those  nations 
which  rose  into  power  over  six  thousand  years  ago,  in 
the  basin  of  the  icastern  Mediterranean,  and  the  ad- 
jacent regions  on  the  east  of  it.  Had  the  Euphrates 
finally  found  its  way  into  the  Mediterranean,  toward 
which,  indeed,  it  seems  to  have  started,  both  the  early 
civilizations,  to  which  we  refer,  might  then  have  been 
included  in  the  Mediterranean  basin.  As  it  is,  the 
scene  of  early  oriental  history  does  not  fall  entirely 
within  that  basin,  but  must  be  designated  as  the  east- 
ern Mediterranean  region.  It  lies  in  the  midst  of  the 
vast  desert  plateau,  which,  beginning  at  the  Atlantic, 
extends  eastward  across  the  entire  northern  end  of 
Africa,  and  continuing  beyond  the  depression  of  the 
Red  Sea,  passes  northeastward,  with  some  interrup- 
tions, far  into  the  heart  of  Asia.  Approaching  it,  the 
one  from  the  south  and  the  other  from  the  north,  two 
great  river  valleys  traverse  this  desert;  in  Asia,  the 
Tigro-Euphrates  valley;  in  Africa  that  of  the  Nile.  It 
is  in  these  two  valleys  that  the  career  of  man  may  be 
traced  from  the  rise  of  European  civilization  back  to  a 
remoter  age  than  anywhere  else  on  earth;  and  it  is 
from  these  two  cradles  of  the  human  race  that  the  in- 
fluences which  emanated  from  their  highly  developed 

3 


4 


INTRODUCTION 


but  differing  cultures,  can  now  be  more  and  more 
clearly  traced  as  we  discern  them  converging  upon  the 
early  civilization  of  Asia  Minor  and  southern  Europe. 

2.  The  Nile,  which  created  the  valley  home  of  the 
early  Egyptians,  rises  three  degrees  south  of  the  equa- 
tor, and  flowing  into  the  Mediterranean  at  over  thirty- 
one  and  a  half  degrees  north  latitude,  it  attains  a  length 
of  some  four  thousand  miles  and  vies  with  the  greatest 
rivers  of  the  world  in  length,  if  not  in  volume.  In  its 
upper  course  the  river,  emerging  from  the  lakes  of 
equatorial  Africa,  is  known  as  the  White  Nile.  Just 
south  of  north  latitude  sixteen  at  Khartum,  about 
thirteen  hundred  and  fifty  miles  from  the  sea,  it  re- 
ceives from  the  east  an  affluent  known  as  the  Blue 
Nile,  which  is  a  considerable  mountain  torrent,  rising 
in  the  lofty  highlands  of  Abyssinia.  One  hundred  and 
forty  miles  below  the  union  of  the  two  Niles  the  stream 
is  joined  by  its  only  other  tributary,  the  Atbara,  which 
is  a  freshet  not  unlike  the  Blue  Nile.  It  is  at  Khar- 
tum, or  just  below  it,  that  the  river  enters  the  table- 
land of  Nubian  sandstone,  underlying  the  Great  Sa- 
hara. Here  it  winds  on  its  tortuous  course  between 
the  desert  hills,  where  it  returns  upon  itself,  often 
flowing  due  south,  until  after  it  has  finally  pushed 
through  to  the  north,  its  course  describes  a  vast  S. 

3.  In  six  different  places  throughout  this  region  the 
current  has  hitherto  failed  to  erode  a  perfect  channel 
through  the  stubborn  stone,  and  these  extended  inter- 
ruptions, where  the  rocks  are  piled  in  scattered  and 
irregular  masses  in  the  stream,  are  known  as  the  cata- 
racts of  the  Nile;  although  there  is  no  great  and  sud- 
den fall  such  as  that  of  our  cataract  at  Niagara.  These 
rocks  interfere  with  navigation  most  seriously  in  the 
region  of  the  second  and  fourth  cataracts;  otherwise 


AfAP  I.    EGYl'T  AND   THE  ANCIENT  WOULD. 


THE  LAND  OF  THE  EGYPTIANS 


5 


the  river  is  navigable  almost  throughout  its  entire 
course.  At  Elephantine  it  passes  the  granite  barrier 
which  there  thrusts  up  its  rough  shoulder,  forming  the 
first  cataract,  and  thence  emerges  upon  an  unob- 
structed course  to  the  sea. 

4.  It  is  the  valley  below  the  first  cataract  which  con- 
stituted Eg}^pt  proper.  The  reason  for  the  change 
which  here  gives  the  river  a  free  course  is  the  disap- 
pearance of  the  sandstone,  sixty-eight  miles  below  the 
cataract,  at  Edfu,  where  the  nummulitic  limestone 
which  forms  the  northern  desert  plateau,  offers  the 
stream  an  easier  task  in  the  erosion  of  its  bed.  It  has 
thus  produced  a  vast  canon  or  trench  cut  across  the 
eastern  end  of  the  Sahara  to  the  northern  sea.  From 
cliff  to  cliff,  the  valley  varies  in  width,  from  ten  or 
twelve,  to  some  thirty-one  miles.  The  floor  of  the 
canon  is  covered  with  black,  alluvial  deposits,  through 
which  the  river  winds  northward.  It  cuts  a  deep 
channel  through  the  alluvium,  flowing  with  a  speed  of 
about  three  miles  an  hour;  in  width  it  only  twice  at- 
tains a  maximum  of  eleven  hundred  yards.  On  the 
west  the  Bahr  Yusuf  a  second,  minor  channel  some 
two  hundred  miles  long,  leaves  the  main  stream  near 
Siut  and  flows  into  the  Fayum.  In  antiquity  it  flow^ed 
thence  into  a  canal  known  as  the  "North,"  which 
passed  northward  west  of  Memphis  and  reached  the 
sea  by  the  site  of  later  Alexandria  (BAR,  iv  224,  1.  8, 
note).  A  little  over  a  hundred  miles  from  the  sea  the 
main  stream  enters  the  broad  triangle,  w^ith  apex  at 
the  south,  which  the  Greeks  so  graphically  called  the 
"Delta."  This  is  of  course  a  bay  of  prehistoric  ages, 
which  has  been  gradually  filled  up  by  the  river.  The 
stream  once  divided  at  this  point  and  reached  the  sea 
through  seven  mouths,  but  in  modem  times  there  are 


6 


INTRODUCTION 


but  two  main  branches,  straggling  through  the  Delta 
and  piercing  the  coast-line  on  either  side  of  the  mid- 
dle. The  western  branch  is  called  the  Rosetta  mouth; 
the  eastern  that  of  Damiette. 

5.  The  deposits  which  have  formed  the  Delta,  are 
very  deep,  and  have  slowly  risen  over  the  sites  of  the 
many  ancient  cities  which  once  flourished  there.  The 
old  swamps  which  once  must  have  rendered  the  regions 
of  the  northern  Delta  a  vast  morass,  have  been  gradu- 
ally filled  up,  and  the  fringe  of  marshes  pushed  further 
out.  They  undoubtedly  occupied  in  antiquity  a  much 
larger  proportion  of  the  Delta  than  they  do  now.  In 
the  valley  above,  the  depth  of  the  soil  varies  from  thirty- 
three  to  thirty-eight  feet,  and  sometimes  reaches  a 
maximum  of  ten  miles  in  width.  The  cultivable  area 
thus  formed,  between  the  cataract  and  the  sea,  is  less 
than  ten  thousand  square  miles  in  extent,  being  roughly 
equal  to  the  area  of  the  state  of  Maryland,  or  about 
ten  per  cent,  less  than  that  of  Belgium.  The  cliffs  on 
either  hand  are  usually  but  a  few  hundred  feet  in 
height,  but  here  and  there  they  rise  into  almost  moun- 
tains of  a  thousand  feet.  They  are  of  course  flanked 
by  the  deserts  through  which  the  Nile  has  cut  its  way. 
On  the  west  the  Libyan  Desert  or  the  great  Sahara 
rolls  in  illimitable,  desolate  hills  of  sand,  grave?  and 
rock,  from  six  hundred  and  fifty  to  a  thousand  feet 
above  the  Nile.  Its  otherwise  waterless  expanse  is 
broken  only  by  an  irregular  line  of  oases,  or  watered 
depressions,  roughly  parallel  with  the  river  and  doubt- 
less owing  their  springs  and  wells  to  infiltration  of  the 
Nile  waters.  The  largest  of  these  depressions  is  situa- 
ated  so  close  to  the  valley  that  the  rock  wall  which  once 
separated  them  has  broken  down,  producing  the  fertile 
Fayum,  watered  by  the  Bahr  Yusuf.    Otherwise  the 


THE  LAND  OF  THE  EGYPTIANS 


7 


western  desert  held  no  economic  resources  for  the  use 
of  the  early  Nile-dwellers.  The  eastern  or  Arabian 
Desert  is  somewhat  less  inhospitable,  and  capable  of 
yielding  a  scanty  subsistence  to  wandering  tribes  of 
Ababdeh.  Deposits  of  alabaster  and  extensive  masses 
of  various  fine,  hard  igneous  rocks  led  to  the  exploita- 
tion of  quarries  here  also,  while  the  Red  Sea  harbours 
could  of  course  be  reached  only  by  traversing  this 
desert,  through  which  established  routes  thither  were 
early  traced.  Further  north  similar  mineral  resources 
led  to  an  acquaintance  with  the  peninsula  of  Sinai  and 
its  desert  regions,  at  a  very  remote  date. 

6.  The  situation  afforded  by  this  narrow  valley  was 
one  of  unusual  isolation;  on  either  hand  vast  desert 
^'astes,  on  the  north  the  harbourless  coast-line  of  the 
Delta,  and  on  the  south  the  rocky  barriers  of  successive 
cataracts,  preventing  fusion  with  the  peoples  of  inner 
Africa.  It  was  chiefly  at  the  two  northern  corners  of 
the  Delta,  that  outside  influences  and  foreign  elements 
which  were  always  sifting  into  the  Nile  valley,  gained 
access  to  the  country.  Through  the  eastern  corner  it 
was  the  prehistoric  Semitic  population  of  neighbouring 
Asia,  who  forced  their  way  in  across  the  dangerous 
interv^ening  deserts;  while  the  Libyan  races,  of  possi- 
bly European  origin,  found  entrance  at  the  western 
corner.  The  products  of  the  south  also,  in  spite  of 
the  cataracts,  filtered  in  ever  increasing  volume  into 
the  regions  of  the  lower  river  and  the  lower  end  of  the 
first  cataract  became  a  trading  post,  ever  after  known 
as  "Suan"  (Assuan)  or  "market,''  where  the  negro 
traders  of  the  south  met  those  of  Egypt.  The  upper 
Nile  thus  gradually  became  a  regular  avenue  of  com- 
merce with  the  Sudan.  The  natural  boundaries  of 
Egypt,  however,  always  presented  sufiiciently  effective 


8 


INTRODUCTION 


barriers  to  would-be  invaders,  to  enable  the  natives 
slowly  to  assimilate  the  newcomers,  without  being 
displaced. 

7.  It  will  be  evident  that  the  remarkable  shape  of 
the  country  must  powerfully  influence  its  political  de- 
velopment. Except  in  the  Delta  it  was  but  a  narrow 
line,  some  seven  hundred  and  fifty  miles  long.  Strag- 
gling its  slender  length  along  the  river,  and  sprawling 
out  into  the  Delta,  it  totally  lacked  the  compactness 
necessary  to  stable  political  organization.  A  given 
locality  has  neighbours  on  only  two  sides,  north  and 
south,  and  these  their  shortest  boundaries;  local  feeling 
was  strong,  local  differences  were  persistent,  and  a 
man  of  the  Delta  could  hardly  understand  the  speech 
of  a  man  of  the  first  cataract  region.  It  was  only  the 
ease  of  communication  afforded  by  the  river  which  in 
any  degree  neutralized  the  effect  of  the  country's  re- 
markable length. 

8.  The  wealth  of  commerce  which  the  river  served 
to  carry,  it  was  equally  instrumental  in  producing. 
While  the  climate  of  the  country  is  not  rainless,  yet  the 
rare  showers  of  the  south,  often  separated  by  intervals 
of  years,  and  even  the  more  frequent  rains  of  the  Delta, 
are  totally  insufficient  to  maintain  the  processes  of 
agriculture.  The  marvellous  productivity  of  the  Egyp- 
tian soil  is  due  to  the  annual  inundation  of  the  river, 
which  is  caused  by  the  melting  of  the  snows,  and  by  the 
spring  rains  at  the  sources  of  the  Blue  Nile.  Freighted 
with  the  rich  loam  of  the  Abyssinian  highlands,  the 
rushing  waters  of  the  spring  freshet  hurry  down  the 
Nubian  valley,  and  a  slight  rise  is  discernible  at  the 
first  cataract  in  the  early  part  of  June.  The  flood 
swells  rapidly  and  steadily,  and  although  the  increase 
is  usually  interrupted  for  nearly  a  month  from  the  end 


0 


THE  LAND  OF  THE  EGYPTIANS  9 


of  September  on,  it  is  usually  resumed  again,  and  the 
maximum  level  continues  until  the  end  of  October  or 
into  November.  The  waters  in  the  region  of  the  first 
cataract  are  then  nearly  fifty  feet  higher  than  at  low 
water;  while  at  Cairo  the  rise  is  about  half  that  at  the 
cataract.  A  vast  and  elaborate  system  of  irrigation 
canals  and  reservoirs  first  receives  the  flood,  which  is 
then  allowed  to  escape  into  the  fields  as  needed.  Here 
it  rests  long  enough  to  deposit  its  burden  of  rich,  black 
earth  from  the  upper  reaches  of  the  Blue  Nile.  At 
such  times  the  appearance  of  the  country  is  picturesque 
in  the  extreme,  the  glistening  surface  of  the  waters  being 
dotted  here  and  there  by  the  vivid  green  of  the  waving 
palm  groves,  which  mark  the  villages,  now  accessible 
only  along  the  dykes  belonging  to  the  irrigation  system. 
Thus  year  by  year,  the  soil  which  would  otherwise  be- 
come impoverished  in  the  elements  necessary  to  the 
production  of  such  prodigious  harvests,  is  invariably 
replenished  with  fresh  resources. 

9.  As  the  river  sinks  below  the  level  of  the  fields 
again,  it  is  necessary  to  raise  the  water  from  the  canals 
by  artificial  means,  in  order  to  carry  on  the  constant 
irrigation  of  the  growing  crops  in  the  outlying  fields, 
which  are  too  high  to  be  longer  refreshed  by  absorption 
from  the  river.  Thus  a  genial  and  generous,  but  ex- 
acting soil,  demanded  for  its  cultivation  the  develop- 
ment of  a  high  degree  of  skill  in  the  manipulation  of 
the  life-giving  waters,  and  at  a  very  early  day  the  men 
of  the  Nile  valley  had  attained  a  surprising  command  of 
the  complicated  problems  involved  in  the  proper 
utilization  of  the  river.  If  Egypt  became  the  mother 
of  the  mechanical  arts,  the  river  will  have  been  one  of 
the  chief  natural  forces  to  which  this  fact  was  due. 
With  such  natural  assets  as  these,  an  ever  replenished 


10 


INTRODUCTION 


soil,  and  almost  unfailing  waters  for  its  refreshment, 
the  wealth  of  Egypt  could  not  but  be  chiefly  agricul- 
tural, a  fact  to  which  we  shall  often  recur.  Such 
opulent  fertility  of  course  supported  a  large  popula- 
tion— in  Roman  times  some  seven  million  souls  (Dio- 
dorus  I,  31) — while  in  our  own  day  it  maintains  over 
nine  million,  a  density  of  population  far  surpassing 
that  to  be  found  anywhere  in  Europe.  The  other 
natural  resources  of  the  valley  we  shall  be  better  able 
to  trace  as  we  follow  their  exploitation  in  the  course  of 
the  historical  development. 

10.  In  climate  Egypt  is  a  veritable  paradise,  drawing 
to  its  shores  at  the  present  day  an  ever  increasing 
number  of  winter  guests.  The  air  of  Egypt  is  essen- 
tially that  of  the  deserts  within  which  it  lies,  and  such 
is  its  purity  and  dryness  that  even  an  excessive  degree 
of  heat  occasions  but  slight  discomfort,  owing  to  the 
fact  that  the  moisture  of  the  body  is  dried  up  almost 
as  fast  as  it  is  exhaled.  The  mean  temperature  of  the 
Delta  in  winter  is  56°  Fahrenheit  and  in  the  valley 
above  it  is  ten  degrees  higher.  In  summer  the  mean 
in  the  Delta  is  83°;  and  although  the  summer  tem- 
perature in  the  valley  is  sometimes  as  high  as  122°,  the 
air  is  far  from  the  oppressiveness  accompanying  the 
same  degree  of  heat  in  other  lands.  The  nights  even  in 
summer  are  always  cool,  and  the  vast  expanses  of  vege- 
tation appreciably  reduce  the  temperature.  In  winter 
just  before  dawn  the  extreme  cold  is  surprising,  as 
contrasted  with  the  genial  warmth  of  mid-day  at  the 
same  season.  To  the  absence  of  rain  we  have  already 
adverted.  The  rare  showers  of  upper  Egypt  occur 
only  when  cyclonic  disturbance^^  in  the  southern 
Mediterranean  or  northern  Sahara  force  undischarged 
clouds  into  the  Nile  valley  from  the  west;  from  the 


THE  LAND  OF  THE  EGYPTIANS 


11 


east  they  cannot  reach  the  valley,  owing  to  the  high 
mountain  ridge  along  the  Red  Sea,  which  forces  them 
upward  and  discharges  them.  The  lower  Delta,  how- 
ever, falls  within  the  zone  of  the  northern  rainy  season. 
In  spite  of  the  wide  extent  of  marshy  ground,  left  stag- 
nating by  the  inundation,  the  dry  airs  of  the  desert, 
blowing  constantly  across  the  valley,  quickly  dry  the 
soil,  and  there  is  never  any  malarial  infection  in  upper 
'Egypt.  Even  in  the  vast  morass  of  the  Delta,  malaria 
is  practically  unknown.  Thus,  lying  just  outside  of 
the  tropics,  Eg}^t  enjoyed  a  mild  climate  of  unsur- 
passed salubrity,  devoid  of  the  harshness  of  a  northern 
winter,  but  at  the  same  time  sufficiently  cool  to  escape 
those  ener\^ating  influences  inherent  in  tropical  condi- 
tions. 

11.  The  prospect  of  this  contracted  valley  spread  out 
before  the  Nile  dweller,  was  in  antiquity,  as  it  is  to-day 
somewhat  monotonous.  The  level  Nile  bottoms,  the 
gift  of  the  river,  clad  in  rich  green,  shut  in  on  either 
hand  by  the  yellow^  cliffs,  are  unrelieved  by  any  eleva- 
tions or  by  any  forests,  save  the  occasional  groves  of 
graceful  palms,  which  fringe  the  river  banks  or  shade 
the  villages  of  sombre  mud  huts,  with  now  and  then  a 
sycamore,  a  tamarisk  or  an  acacia.  A  network  of 
irrigation  canals  traverses  the  countr}"  in  every  direc- 
tion like  a  vast  arterial  system.  The  sands  of  the 
desolate  wastes  which  lie  behind  the  canon  walls,  drift 
in  athwart  the  cliffs,  and  often  invade  the  green  fields 
so  that  one  may  stand  with  one  foot  in  the  verdure  of 
the  valley,  and  the  other  in  the  desert  sand.  Thus 
sharply  defined  was  the  Eg}'ptian's  world:  a  deep  and 
narrow  river-valley  of  unparalleled  fertility,  winding 
between  lifeless  deserts,  furnishing  a  remarkable  en- 
vironment, not  to  be  found  elsewhere  in  all  the  world. 


IJNTRODUCTION 


Such  surroundings  reacted  powerfully  upon  the  mind 
and  thought  of  the  Egyptian,  conditioning  and  deter- 
mining his  idea  of  the  world  and  his  notion  of  the 
mysterious  powers  which  ruled  it. 

12.  Such  was  in  brief  the  scene  in  which  developed 
the  people  of  the  Nile,  whose  culture  dominated  the 
basin  of  the  eastern  Mediterranean  in  the  age  when 
Europe  was  emerging  into  the  secondary  stages  of 
civilization,  and  coming  into  intimate  contact  with  the 
culture  of  the  early  east.  Nowhere  on  earth  have  the 
witnesses  of  a  great,  but  now  extinct  civilization,  been 
so  plentifully  preserved  as  along  the  banks  of  the  Nile. 
Even  in  the  Delta,  where  the  storms  of  war  beat  more 
fiercely  than  in  the  valley  above,  and  where  the  slow 
accumulations  from  the  yearly  flood  have  gradually 
entombed  them,  the  splendid  cities  of  the  Pharaohs 
have  left  great  stretches  cumbered  with  enormous 
blocks  of  granite,  limestone  and  sandstone,  shattered 
obelisks,  and  massive  pylon  bases,  to  proclaim  the 
wealth  and  power  of  forgotten  ages;  while  an  ever 
growing  multitude  of  modern  visitors  are  drawn  to  the 
upper  valley  by  the  colossal  ruins  that  greet  the  won- 
dering traveller  almost  at  every  bend  in  the  stream. 
Nowhere  else  in  the  ancient  world  were  such  massive 
stone  buildings  erected,  and  nowhere  else  has  a  dry 
atmosphere,  coupled  with  an  almost  complete  absence 
of  rain,  permitted  the  survival  of  such  a  wealth  of  the 
best  and  highest  in  the  life  of  an  ancient  people,  in  so  far 
as  that  life  found  expression  in  material  form.  In  the 
plenitude  of  its  splendour,  much  of  it  thus  survived 
into  the  classic  age  of  European  civilization,  and  hence 
it  was,  that  as  Egypt  was  gradually  overpowered  and 
absorbed  by  the  western  world,  the  currents  of  life 
from  west  and  east  commingled  here,  as  they  have 


THE  LAND  OF  THE  EGYPTIAXS 


13 


never  done  elsewhere.  Both  in  the  Nile  valley  and 
beyond  it,  the  west  thus  felt  the  full  impact  of  Egyptian 
civilization  for  many  centuries,  and  gained  from  it  all 
that  its  manifold  culture  had  to  contribute.  The  career 
which  made  Eg^-pt  so  rich  a  heritage  of  alien  peoples, 
and  a  legacy  so  valuable  to  all  later  ages,  we  shall 
endeavour  to  trace  in  the  ensuing  chapters. 


IT 


PRELIMINARY  SURVEY,  CHRONOLOGY  AND  DOCU= 
MENTARY  SOURCES 

13.  A  RAPID  sun^ey  of  the  purely  external  features 
which  serve  to  demark  the  great  epochs  in  the  career  of 
the  Nile  valley  people,  will  enable  us  the  more  intelli- 
gently to  study  those  epochs  in  detail,  as  we  meet  them 
in  the  course  of  our  progress.  In  such  a  survey,  we 
sweep  our  eyes  down  a  period  of  four  thousand  years 
of  human  history,  from  a  time  when  the  only  civiliza- 
tion known  in  the  basin  of  the  Mediterranean  is  slowly 
dawning  among  a  primitive  people  on  the  shores  of  the 
Nile.  We  can  cast  but  a  brief  glance  at  the  outward 
events  which  characterized  each  great  period,  espe- 
cially noting  how  foreign  peoples  are  gradually  drawn 
within  the  circle  of  Egyptian  intercourse  from  age  to 
age,  and  reciprocal  influences  ensue;  until  in  the  thir- 
teenth century  b.  c.  the  peoples  of  southern  Europe, 
long  discernible  in  their  material  civilization,  emerge 
in  the  written  documents  of  Egypt  for  the  first  time  in 
history.  It  was  then  that  the  fortunes  of  the  Pharaohs 
began  to  decline,  and  as  the  civilization  and  power, 
first  of  the  East  and  then  of  classic  Europe,  slowly 
developed,  Egypt  was  finally  subm.erged  in  the  great 
world  of  Mediterranean  powers,  first  dominated  by 
Persia,  and  then  by  Greece  and  Rome. 

14.  The  career  of  the  races  which  peopled  the  Nile 
valley  falls  into  a  series  of  more  or  less  clearly  marked 

14 


PRELDIIXARY  SURVEY 


15 


epochs,  each  of  which  is  rooted  deeply  in  that  which 
preceded  it,  and  itself  contains  the  germs  of  that  which 
is  to  follow.  A  more  or  less  arbitrary  and  artificial  but 
convenient  subdivision  of  these  epochs,  beginning  with 
the  historic  age,  is  furnished  by  the  so-called  dynasties 
of  ^Nlanetho.  This  native  historian  of  Eg}^t,  a  priest 
of  Sebenn\i;os,  who  flourished  under  Ptolemy  I  (305- 
285  B.  c),  ^Tote  a  history  of  his  country  in  the  Greek 
language.  The  work  has  perished,  and  we  only  know 
it  in  an  epitome  by  Julius  Africanus  and  Eusebius,  and 
extracts  by  Josephus.  The  value  of  the  work  was 
slight,  as  it  was  built  up  on  folk-tales  and  popular 
traditions  of  the  early  kings.  Manetho  divided  the 
long  succession  of  Pharaohs,  as  known  to  him,  into 
thirty  royal  houses  or  dynasties,  and  although  we  know 
that  many  of  his  divisions  are  arbitrary,  and  that  there 
was  many  a  dynastic  change  where  he  indicates  none, 
yet  his  dynasties  divide  the  kings  into  convenient 
groups,  which  have  so  long  been  employed  in  modern 
study  of  Egyptian  historv',  that  it  is  now  impossible  to 
dispense  with  them. 

15.  After  an  archaic  age  of  primitive  civilization,  and 
a  period  of  small  and  local  kingdoms,  the  various  cen- 
tres of  civilization  on  the  Nile  gradually  coalesced  into 
two  kingdoms:  one  comprising  the  valley  dowTi  to  the 
Delta;  and  the  other  made  up  of  the  Delta  itself.  In 
the  Delta,  civilization  rapidly  advanced,  and  the  calen- 
dar year  of  365  days  was  introduced  in  4241  b.  c,  the 
earliest  fixed  date  in  the  histor}^  of  the  world  as  known 
to  us  (MC,  38  ff.,  BAR,  I,  44^5).  A  long  develop- 
ment, as  the  "Two  Lands,"  which  left  their  imprint 
forever  after  on  the  civilization  of  later  centuries,  pre- 
ceded a  united  Eg}'pt,  which  emerged  upon  our  his- 
toric horizon  at  the  consolidation  of  the  two  kingdoms 


16 


INTRODUCTION 


into  one  nation  under  Menes  about  3400  B.  c.  His 
accession  marks  the  beginning  of  the  dynasties,  and  the 
preceding,  earHest  period  may  be  conveniently  desig- 
nated as  the  predynastic  age.  In  the  excavations  of 
the  last  twelve  years  (since  1895)  the  predynastic  civ- 
ilization has  been  gradually  revealed  in  material  docu- 
ments exhibiting  the  various  stages  in  the  slow  evolu- 
tion  which  at  last  produced  the  dynastic  culture. 

16.  A  uniform  government  of  the  whole  country  was 
the  secret  of  over  four  centuries  of  prosperity  under  the 
descendants  of  Menes  at  Thinis,  near  Abydos,  close  to 
the  great  bend  of  the  Nile  below  Thebes,  and  probably 
also  at  or  near  later  Memphis.  The  remarkable  de- 
velopment of  these  four  centuries  in  material  civiliza- 
tion led  to  the  splendour  and  power  of  the  first  great 
epoch  of  Egyptian  history,  the  Old  Kingdom.  The 
seat  of  government  was  at  Memphis,  where  four  royal 
houses,  the  Third,  Fourth,  Fifth  and  Sixth  Dynasties, 
ruled  in  succession  for  five  hundred  years  (2980-2475 
B.  c).  Art  and  mechanics  reached  a  level  of  unpre- 
cedented excellence  never  later  surpassed,  while  govern- 
ment and  administration  had  never  before  been  so 
highly  developed.  Foreign  enterprise  passed  far  be- 
yond the  limits  of  the  kingdom;  the  mines  of  Sinai, 
already  operated  in  the  First  Dynasty,  were  vigourously 
exploited;  trade  in  Egyptian  bottoms  reached  the  coast 
ot  Phoenicia  and  the  Islands  of  the  North,  while  in  the 
South,  the  Pharaoh's  fleets  penetrated  to  the  Somali 
coast  (Punt)  on  the  Red  Sea;  and  in  Nubia  his  envoys 
were  strong  enough  to  exercise  a  loose  sovereignty  over 
the  lower  country,  and  by  tireless  expeditions  to  keep 
open  the  trade  routes  leading  to  the  Sudan.  In  the 
Sixth  Dynasty  (2625-2475  b.  c.)  the  local  governors  of 
the  central  administration,  who  had  already  gained 


PRELIMINARY  SURVEY 


17 


hereditary  hold  upon  their  oflfices  in  the  Fifth  Dynasty 
(2750-2625  b.  c),  were  able  to  assert  themselves  as 
landed  barons  and  princes,  no  longer  mere  function- 
aries of  the  crown.  They  thus  prepared  the  w^ay  for 
an  age  of  feudalism. 

17.  The  growing  powder  of  the  new  landed  nobility 
finally  caused  the  fall  of  the  Pharaonic  house,  and  at 
the  close  of  the  Sixth  Dynasty,  about  2475  b.  c,  the 
supremacy  of  Memphis  waned.  In  the  internal  con- 
fusion w^hich  followed,  we  can  discern  nothing  of 
Manetho^s  ephemeral  Seventh  and  Eighth  Dynasties 
at  Memphis,  which  lasted  not  more  than  thirty  years; 
but  with  the  Ninth  and  Tenth  Dynasties  the  nobles  of 
Heracleopolis  gained  the  throne,  which  was  occupied 
by  eighteen  successive  kings  of  the  line.  It  is  now  that 
Thebes  first  appears  as  the  seat  of  a  powerful  family 
of  princes,  by  whom  the  Heracleopolitans  and  the 
power  of  the  north  are  gradually  overcome  till  the 
South  triumphs.  The  exact  lapse  of  time  from  the  fall 
of  the  Old  Kingdom  to  the  triumph  of  the  South  is  at 
present  indeterminable,  but  it  may  be  estimated 
roughly  at  two  hundred  and  seventy-five  to  three 
hundred  years,  with  a  margin  of  uncertainty  of  pos- 
sibly a  century  either  way  (BAR,  I,  53). 

18.  With  the  restoration  of  peace  and  order  under 
the  Theban  princes  of  the  Eleventh  Dynasty  about 
2160  B.  c,  the  issue  of  the  tendencies  already  dis- 
cernible at  the  close  of  the  Old  Kingdom  is  clearly 
visible.  Throughout  the  land  the  local  princes  and 
barons  are  firmly  seated  in  their  domains,  and  with 
these  hereditary  feudatories  the  Pharaoh  must  now 
reckon.  The  system  was  not  fully  developed  until  the 
advent  of  a  second  Theban  family,  the  Twelfth  Dy- 
nasty, the  founder  of  which,  Amenemhet  I,  probably 


18 


INTRODUCTION 


usurped  the  throne.  For  over  two  hundred  years 
(2000-1788  B.  c.)  this  powerful  line  of  kings  ruled  a 
feudal  state.  This  feudal  age  is  the  classic  period  of 
Eg}^tian  history.  Literature  flourished,  the  orthog- 
raphy of  the  language  was  for  the  first  time  regulated, 
poetry  had  already  reached  a  highly  artistic  structure, 
the  earliest  known  literature  of  entertainment  w^as  pro- 
duced, sculpture  and  architecture  were  rich  and  pro- 
lific, and  the  industrial  arts  surpassed  all  previous 
attainments.  The  internal  resources  of  the  country 
were  elaborately  developed,  especially  by  close  atten- 
tion to  the  Nile  and  the  inundation.  Enormous 
hydraulic  works  reclaimed  large  tracts  of  cultivable 
domain  in  the  Fayum,  in  the  vicinity  of  which  the  kings 
of  the  Twelfth  Dynasty,  the  Amenemhets  and  the 
Sesostrises,  lived.  Abroad  the  exploitation  of  the 
mines  in  Sinai  was  now  carried  on  by  the  constant 
labour  of  permanent  colonies  there,  with  temples,  for- 
tifications and  reservoirs  for  the  water  supply.  A 
plundering  campaign  was  carried  into  Syria,  trade  and 
intercourse  with  its  Semitic  tribes  were  constant,  and 
an  interchange  of  commodities  with  the  early  Mycenaean 
centres  of  civilization  in  the  northern  Mediterranean 
is  evident.  Traffic  with  Punt  and  the  southern  coasts 
of  the  Red  Sea  continued,  while  in  Nubia  the  country 
between  the  first  and  second  cataracts,  loosely  con- 
trolled in  the  Sixth  Dynasty,  was  now  conquered  and 
held  tributary  by  the  Pharaoh,  so  that  the  gold  mines 
on  the  east  of  it  were  a  constant  resource  of  his  treasury. 

19.  The  fall  of  the  Twelfth  Dynasty  in  1788  b.  c. 
was  followed  by  a  second  period  of  disorganization  and 
obscurity,  as  the  feudatories  struggled  for  the  crown. 
After  possibly  a  century  of  such  internal  conflict,  the 
country  was  entered  and  appropriated  by  a  line  of 


PRELIMINARY  SURVEY 


19 


rulers  from  Asia,  who  had  seemingly  already  gained  a 
wide  dominion  there.  These  foreign  usurpers,  now 
known  as  the  Hyksos,  after  Manetho's  designation  of 
them,  maintained  themselves  for  perhaps  a  century. 
Their  residence  was  at  Avaris  in  the  eastern  Delta, 
and  at  least  during  the  later  part  of  their  supremacy, 
the  Eg}^ptian  nobles  of  the  South  succeeded  in  gaining 
more  or  less  independence.  Finally  the  head  of  a 
Theban  family  boldly  proclaimed  himself  king,  and  in 
the  course  of  some  years  these  Theban  princes  suc- 
ceeded in  expelling  the  Hyksos  from  the  country,  and 
driving  them  back  from  the  Asiatic  frontier  into  S}Tia. 

20,  It  was  under  the  Hyksos  and  in  the  struggle  with 
them  that  the  consen^atism  of  millennia  was  broken 
up  in  the  Nile  valley.  The  Egyptians  learned  aggres- 
sive war  for  the  first  time,  and  introduced  a  well  or- 
ganized military  system,  including  chariotry,  which  the 
importation  of  the  horse  by  the  Hyksos  now  enabled 
them  to  do.  Egypt  was  transformed  into  a  military 
empire.  In  the  struggle  with  the  Hyksos  and  with 
each  other,  the  old  feudal  families  perished,  or  were 
absorbed  among  the  partisans  of  the  dominant  Theban 
family,  from  which  the  imperial  line  sprang.  The 
great  Pharaohs  of  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty  thus  be- 
came emperors,  conquering  and  ruling  from  northern 
Syria  and  the  upper  Euphrates,  to  the  fourth  cataract 
of  the  Nile  on  the  south.  Amid  unprecedented  wealth 
and  splendour,  they  ruled  their  vast  dominions,  which 
they  gradually  welded  together  into  a  fairly  stable 
empire,  the  first  known  in  the  early  world.  Thebes 
grew  into  a  great  metropolis,  the  earliest  monumental 
city.  Extensive  trade  relations  with  the  East  and  the 
Mediterranean  world  developed;  Mycensean  products 
were  common  in  Egypt,  and  Egyptian  influences  are 


20 


INTRODUCTION 


clearly  discernible  in  Mycena?an  art.  For  two  hundred 
and  thirty  years  (1580-1350  b.  c.)  the  Empire  flour- 
ished, but  was  wrecked  at  last  by  a  combination  of 
adverse  influences  both  within  and  without.  A  relig- 
ious revolution  by  the  young  and  gifted  king  Ikhnaton, 
caused  an  internal  convulsion  such  as  the  country  had 
never  before  experienced;  while  the  empire  in  the 
north  gradually  disintegrated  under  the  aggressions  of 
the  Hittites,  who  pushed  in  from  Asia  Minor.  At  the 
same  time  in  both  the  northern  and  southern  Asiatic 
dominions  of  the  Pharaoh,  an  overflow  of  Beduin  im- 
migration, among  which  were  undoubtedly  some  of  the 
tribes  who  later  coalesced  with  the  Israelites,  aggravated 
the  danger,  and  together  with  the  persistent  advance  of 
the  Hittites,  finally  resulted  in  the  complete  dissolution 
of  the  Asiatic  empire  of  Egypt,  down  to  the  very  frontier 
of  the  northeastern  Delta.  Meanwhile  the  internal 
disorders  had  caused  the  fall  of  the  Eighteenth  Dy- 
nasty, an  event  which  terminated  the  first  Period  of 
the  Empire  (1350  b.  c). 

21.  Harmhab,  one  of  the  able  commanders  under 
the  fallen  dynasty,  survived  the  crisis  and  finally  seized 
the  throne.  Under  his  vigorous  rule  the  disorganized 
nation  was  gradually  restored  to  order,  and  his  succes- 
sors of  the  Nineteenth  Dynasty  (1350-1205  b.  c.)  were 
able  to  begin  the  recovery  of  the  lost  empire  in  Asia. 
But  the  Hittites  were  too  firmly  entrenched  in  Syria 
to  yield  to  the  Egyptian  onset.  The  assaults  of  Seti  I, 
and  half  a  generation  of  persistent  campaigning  under 
Ramses  II,  failed  to  push  the  northern  frontier  of  the 
Empire  far  beyond  the  limits  of  Palestine.  Here  it 
remained  and  Syria  was  never  permanently  recovered. 
Semitic  influences  now  powerfully  affected  Egypt.  At 
this  juncture  the  peoples  of  southern  Europe  emerge 


PRELIMINARY  SURVEY 


21 


for  the  first  time  upon  the  arena  of  oriental  history  and 
together  with  Libyan  hordes,  threaten  to  overwhelm 
the  Delta  from  the  west.  They  were  nevertheless 
beaten  back  by  Merneptah.  After  another  period  of 
internal  confusion  and  usurpation,  during  which  the 
Nineteenth  Dynasty  fell  (1205  B.  c),  Ramses  IIL 
whose  father,  Setnakht  founded  the  Twentieth  Dy- 
nasty (1200-1090  B.  c),  was  able  to  maintain  the 
Empire  at  the  same  limits,  against  the  invasions  of 
restless  northern  tribes,  who  crushed  the  Hittite  power; 
and  also  against  repeated  immigrations  of  the  Libyans. 
With  his  death  (1167  b.  c.)  the  Empire,  with,  the  ex- 
ception of  Nubia,  which  was  still  held,  rapidly  fell  to 
pieces.  Thus,  about  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  century 
B.  c.  the  Second  Period  of  the  imperial  age  closed  with 
the  total  dissolution  of  the  Asiatic  dominions. 

22.  Under  a  series  of  weak  Ramessids,  the  country 
rapidly  declined  and  fell  a  prey  first  to  the  powerful 
high  priests  of  xAmon,  who  were  obliged  almost  imme- 
diately to  yield  to  stronger  Ramessid  rivals  in  the  Delta 
at  Tanis,  forming  the  Twenty-First  Dynasty  (1090- 
945  B.  c).  By  the  middle  of  the  tenth  century  b.  c. 
the  mercenary  chiefs,  whose  followers  had  formed  the 
armies  of  the  second  imperial  period,  had  founded 
powerful  families  in  the  Delta  cities,  and  among  these 
the  Libyans  were  now  supreme.  Sheshonk  I,  a 
Libyan  mercenary  commander,  gained  the  throne  as 
the  founder  of  the  Twenty-second  Dynasty  in  945  b.  c. 
and  the  country  enjoyed  transient  prosperity,  while 
Sheshonk  even  attempted  the  recovery  of  Palestine. 
But  the  family  was  unable  to  control  the  turbulent 
mercenar}^  lords,  now  established  as  dynasts  in  the 
larger  Delta  towns,  and  the  country  gradually  relapsed 
into  a  series  of  military  principalities  in  constant  war- 


22 


INTRODUCTION 


fare  with  each  other.  Through  the  entire  Libyan 
period  of  the  Twenty-second,  Twenty-third  and 
Twenty-fourth  Dynasties  (945-712  b.  c.)  the  un- 
happy nation  groaned  under  such  misrule,  constantly 
suffering  economic  deterioration. 

23.  Nubia  had  now  detached  itself  and  a  dynasty  of 
kings,  probably  of  Theban  origin  had  arisen  at  Napata, 
below  the  Fourth  Cataract.  These  Egyptian  rulers  of 
the  new  Nubian  kingdom  now  invaded  Egypt,  and 
although  residing  at  Napata,  maintained  their  sover- 
eignty in  Egypt  with  varying  fortune  for  two  genera- 
tions (722-663  B.  c).  But  they  were  unable  to  sup- 
press and  exterminate  the  local  dynasts,  who  ruled  on, 
while  acknowledging  the  suzerainty  of  the  Nubian 
overlord.  It  was  in  the  midst  of  these  conflicts  between 
the  Nubian  dynasty  and  the  mercenary  lords  of  Lower 
Egypt,  that  the  Assyrians  finally  entered  the  Delta, 
subdued  the  country  and  placed  it  under  tribute  (670- 
660  B.  c).  At  this  juncture  Psamtik  I,  an  able 
dynast  of  Sais,  in  the  western  Delta,  finally  succeeded 
in  overthrowing  his  rivals,  expelled  the  Ninevite  garri- 
sons, and  as  the  Nubians  had  already  been  forced 
out  of  the  country  by  the  Assyrians,  he  was  able  to 
found  a  powerful  dynasty,  and  usher  in  the  Restoration. 
His  accession  fell  in  663  B.  c,  and  the  entire  period  of 
nearly  five  hundred  years  from  the  final  dissolution  of 
the  Empire  about  1150  to  the  dawn  of  the  Restoration 
in  663  B.  c,  may  be  conveniently  designated  the 
Decadence.  After  1100  b.  c.  the  Decadence  may  be 
conveniently  divided  into  the  Tanite-Amonite  Period 
(1090-945  b.  c).  the  Libyan  Period  (945-712  b.  c), 
the  Ethiopian  Period  (722-663  b.  c),  and  the  Assyrian 
Period,  which  is  contemporary  with  the  last  years  of 
the  Ethiopian  Period. 


PRELIMINARY  SURVEY 


23 


24.  Of  the  Restoration,  like  all  those  epochs  in  which 
the  seat  of  power  was  in  the  Delta,  where  almost  all 
monuments  have  perished,  we  learn  very  little  from 
native  sources;  and  all  too  little  also  from  Herodotus 
and  later  Greek  visitors  in  the  Nile  valley.  It  was 
outwardly  an  age  of  power  and  splendour,  in  which 
the  native  party  endeavoured  to  restore  the  old  glories 
of  the  classic  age  before  the  Empire;  while  the  kings 
depending  upon  Greek  mercenaries,  were  modern 
politicians,  employing  the  methods  of  the  new  Greek 
world,  mingling  in  the  world-politics  of  their  age  and 
showing  little  sympathy  with  the  archaizing  tendency. 
But  their  combinations  failed  to  save  Egypt  from  the 
ambition  of  Persia,  and  its  history  under  native  dy- 
nasties, with  unimportant  exceptions,  was  concluded 
with  the  conquest  of  the  country  by  Cambyses  in  525 

B.  C. 

25.  Such,  in  mechanical  review,  were  the  purely 
external  events  which  marked  the  successive  epochs  of 
Egypt's  history  as  an  independent  nation.  With  their 
dates,  these  epochs  may  be  summarized  thus: 

Introduction  of  the  Calendar,  4241  b.  c. 
Predynastic  Age,  before  3400  b.  c. 
The  Accession  of  Menes,  3400  b.  c. 
The  first  Two  Dynasties,  3400-2980  B.  c. 
The  Old  Kingdom:  Dynasties  Three  to  Six,  2980- 
2475  B.  c. 

Dynasties  Seven  and  Eight,  2475-2445  b.  c. 

Eighteen  Heracleopolitans,  Dynasties  Nine  and  Ten, 
2445-2160  B.  c. 

The  INIiddle  Kingdom :  Dynasties  Eleven  and  Twelve 
2160-1788  B.  c. 

Internal  Conflicts  of  the  Feudatories,  )  1788-1580 

The  Hyksos,  j      B.  c. 


24 


INTRODUCTION 


The  Decadence 


The  Empire:  First  Period,  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty, 
1580-1350  B.  c. 

The  Empire:  Second  Period,  the  Nineteenth  and 
part  of  the  Twentieth  Dynasty,  1350-1150  b.  c. 

Last  Two  Generations  of  Twentieth 
Dynasty,  about  1150  to  1090  b.  c. 
Tanite-Amonite  Period,  Twenty-first 

Dynasty,  1090-945  b.  c. 
Libyan  Period,  Dynasties  Twenty- 
two  to  Twenty-four,  945-712  b.  c. 
Ethiopian  Period,  722-663  b.  c. 
(Twenty-fifth  Dynasty,  712-661 
b.  c. 

Assyrian  Supremacy,  670-660  b.  c. 
The   Restoration,   660-525   B.  c.   (Saite  Period, 
Twenty-sixth  Dynasty,  663-525  .B.  c). 
Persian  Conquest,  525  b.  c. 

26.  The  reader  will  find  at  the  end  of  the  volume  a 
fuller  table  of  reigns.  The  chronology  of  the  above 
table  is  obtained  by  two  independent  processes :  first  by 
''dead  reckoning,"  and  second  by  astronomical  calcula- 
tions based  on  the  Egyptian  calendar.  By  "dead 
reckoning"  we  mean  simply  the  addition  of  the  known 
minimum  length  of  all  the  kings'  reigns,  and  from  the 
total  thus  obtained,  the  simple  computation  (backward 
from  a  fixed  starting  point)  of  the  date  of  the  beginning 
of  the  series  of  reigns  so  added.  Employing  all  the 
latest  dates  from  recent  discoveries,  it  is  mathematically 
certain  that  from  the  accession  of  the  Eighteenth  Dy- 
nasty to  the  conquest  of  the  Persians  in  525  b.  c.  the 
successive  Pharaohs  reigned  at  least  1052  years  in  all 
(BAR,  I,  47-51).  The  Eighteenth  Dynasty  therefore 
began  not  later  than  1577  b.  c.  Astronomical  calcula- 
tions (independent  of  the  above  dead  reckoning),  based 


PRELIMINARY  SURVEY 


25 


on  the  date  of  the  rising  of  Sirius,  and  of  the  occur- 
rence of  new  moons  both  in  terms  of  the  shifting 
Eg^'ptian  calendar,  place  the  date  of  the  accession  of 
the  Eighteenth  Dynasty  with  fair  precision  in  1580 
B.  c.  (BAR,  I,  38-46).  For  the  periods  earlier  than 
the  Eighteenth  Dynasty,  we  can  no  longer  employ  the 
method  of  dead  reckoning  alone,  because  of  the  scanti- 
ness of  the  contemporary  documents.  Fortunately  an- 
other calendar  date  of  the  rising  of  Sirius,  fixes  the 
advent  of  the  Twelfth  Dynasty  at  2000  B.  c,  with  a 
margin  of  uncertainty  of  not  more  than  a  year  or  two 
either  way.  From  this  date  the  beginning  of  the 
Eleventh  Dynasty  is  again  only  a  matter  of  ''dead 
reckoning.  The  uncertainty  as  to  the  duration  of  the 
Heracleopolitan  supremacy  makes  the  length  of  the 
period  between  the  Old  and  Middle  Kingdoms  very 
uncertain.  If  we  give  the  eighteen  Heracleopolitans 
sixteen  years  each,  which,  under  orderly  conditions,  is 
a  fair  average  in  the  Orient,  they  will  have  ruled  288 
years  (BAR,  I,  53).  In  estimating  their  duration  at 
285  years,  we  may  err  possibly  as  much  as  a  century 
either  way.  The  computation  of  the  length  of  the  Old 
Kingdom  is  based  on  contemporary  monuments  and 
early  lists,  in  which  the  margin  of  error  is  probably  not 
more  than  a  generation  or  two  either  w^ay,  but  the  un- 
certain length  of  the  Heracleopolitan  rule  affects  all 
dates  back  of  that  age,  and  a  shift  of  a  century  either 
way  in  the  years  b.  c.  is  not  impossible.  The  ancient 
annals  of  the  Palermo  Stone  establish  the  length  of  the 
first  two  dynasties  at  roughly  420  years  (MC,  201  /., 
BAR,  I,  84-85),  and  the  date  of  the  accession  of  Menes 
and  the  union  of  Egypt  as  3400  B.  c;  but  we  carry 
back  with  us,  from  the  Heracleopolitan  age,  the  same 
wide  margin  of  uncertainty  as  in  the  Old  Kingdom. 


26 


INTRODUCTION 


The  reader  will  have  observed  that  this  system  of 
chronology  is  based  upon  the  contemporary  monu- 
ments and  lists  dating  not  later  than  1200  b.  c.  The 
extremely  high  dates  for  the  beginning  of  the  dynasties 
current  in  some  histories  are  inherited  from  an  older 
generation  of  Egyptologists;  and  are  based  upon  the 
chronology  of  Manetho,  a  late,  careless,  and  uncritical 
compilation,  the  dynastic  totals  of  which  can  be  proven 
wrong  from  the  contemporary  monuments  in  the  vast 
majority  of  cases,  where  such  monuments  have  sur- 
vived. Its  dynastic  totals  are  so  absurdly  high  through- 
out, that  they  are  not  worthy  of  a  moment's  credence, 
being  often  nearly  or  quite  double  the  maximum  drawn 
from  contemporary  monuments^  and  they  will  not  stand 
the  slightest  careful  criticism.  Their  accuracy  is  now 
maintained  only  by  a  small  and  constantly  decreasing 
number  of  modern  scholars. 

27.  Like  our  chronology  our  knowledge  of  the  early 
history  of  Egypt  must  be  gleaned  from  the  contempo- 
rary native  monuments  (BAR,  I,  1-37).  Monumental 
records,  even  when  full  and  complete  are  at  best  but 
insufficient  sources,  affording  data  for  only  the  meagrest 
outlines  of  great  achievements  and  important  epochs. 
While  the  material  civilization  of  the  country  found 
adequate  expression  in  magnificent  works  of  the  artist, 
craftsman  and  engineer,  the  inner  life  of  the  nation, 
or  even  the  purely  external  events  of  moment  could 
find  record  only  incidentally.  Such  documents  are 
sharply  differentiated  from  the  materials  with  which 
the  historian  of  European  nations  deals,  except  of 
course  in  his  study  of  the  earliest  ages.  Extensive 
correspondence  between  statesmen,  journals  and  diaries, 
state  documents  and  reports — such  materials  as  these 
are  almost  wholly  wanting  in  monumental  records. 


PRELIMINARY  SURVEY 


27 


Imagine  writing  a  history  of  Greece  from  the  few  Greek 
inscriptions  surviving.  Moreover,  we  possess  no  his- 
tory of  Egypt  of  sufficiently  early  date  by  a  native 
Egyptian;  the  compilation  of  puerile  folk-tales  by 
Manetho,  in  the  third  century  b.  c.  is  hardly  worthy 
of  the  name  history.  But  an  annalist  of  the  remote 
ages  with  which  we  are  to  deal,  could  have  had  little 
conception  of  what  would  be  important  for  future  ages 
to  know,  even  if  he  had  undertaken  a  full  chronicle  of 
historical  events.  Scanty  annals  were  indeed  kept 
from  the  earliest  times,  but  these  have  entirely  perished 
with  the  exception  of  two  fragments,  the  now  famous 
Palermo  Stone  (BAR,  I,  76-167;  BH,  24),  which  once 
bore  the  annals  of  the  earliest  dynasties  from  the 
beginning  down  into  the  Fifth  Dynasty;  and  some  ex- 
tracts from  the  records  of  Thutmose  III^s  campaigns 
in  Syria.  Of  the  other  monuments  of  incidental  char- 
acter but  the  merest  fraction  has  survived.  Under 
these  circumstances  we  shall  probably  never  be  able  to 
offer  more  than  a  sketch  of  the  civilization  of  the  Old 
and  Middle  Kingdoms,  with  a  hazy  outline  of  the 
general  drift  of  events.  Under  the  Empire  the  avail- 
able documents,  both  in  quality  and  quantity,  for  the 
first  time  approach  the  minimum,  which  in  European 
history  would  be  regarded  as  adequate  to  a  moderately 
full  presentation  of  the  career  of  the  nation.  Scores  of 
important  questions,  however,  still  remain  unanswered, 
in  whatever  direction  we  turn.  Nevertheless  a  rough 
frame-work  of  the  governmental  organization,  the  con- 
stitution of  society,  the  most  important  achievements 
of  the  emperors,  and  to  a  limited  extent  the  spirit  of 
the  age,  may  be  discerned  and  sketched  in  the  main 
outlines,  even  though  it  is  only  here  and  there  that 
the  sources  enable  us  to  fill  in  the  detail.    In  the  De- 


28 


INTRODUCTION 


cadence  and  the  Restoration,  however,  the  same  pau- 
city of  documents,  so  painfully  apparent  in  the  older 
periods,  again  leaves  the  historian  with  a  long  series 
of  hypotheses  and  probabilities.  For  the  reserve  with 
which  the  author  has  constantly  treated  such  periods, 
he  begs  the  reader  to  hold  the  scanty  sources  responsible 
(BAR,  I,  1-26), 


m 


EARLIEST  EGYPT 

28.  The  forefathers  of  the  people  with  whom  we 
shall  have  to  deal  were  related  to  the  Libyans  or  north 
Africans  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  to  the 
peoples  of  eastern  Africa,  now  known  as  the  Galla, 
Somali,  Bega,  and  other  tribes.  An  invasion  of  the 
Nile  valley  by  Semitic  nomads  of  Asia,  stamped  its 
essential  character  unmistakably  upon  the  language  of 
the  African  people  there.  The  earliest  strata  of  the 
Eg}^ptian  language  accessible  to  us,  betray  clearly  this 
composite  origin.  While  still  coloured  by  its  African 
antecedents,  the  language  is  in  structure  Semitic.  It 
is  moreover  a  completed  product  as  observable  in  our 
earliest  preserved  examples  of  it;  but  the  fusion  of  the 
Libyans  and  east  Africans  with  the  Nile  valley  peoples 
continued  far  into  historic  times,  and  in  the  case  of 
the  Libyans  may  be  traced  in  ancient  historical  docu- 
ments for  three  thousand  years  or  more.  The  Semitic 
immigration  from  Asia,  examples  of  which  are  also 
observable  in  the  historic  age,  occurred  in  an  epoch 
that  lies  far  below  our  remotest  historical  horizon. 
We  shall  never  be  able  to  determine  when,  nor  with 
certainty  through  what  channels  it  took  place,  al- 
though the  most  probable  route  is  that  along  which 
we  may  observe  a  similar  influx  from  the  deserts  of 
Arabia  in  historic  times,  the  isthmus  of  Suez,  by  which 

20 


30 


INTRODUCTION 


the  Mohammedan  invasion  entered  the  country.  'WTiile 
the  Semitic  language  which  they  brought  with  them 
left  its  indelible  impress  upon  the  old  Nile  valley  people, 
the  nomadic  life  of  the  desert  which  the  invaders  left 
behind  them  evidently  was  not  so  persistent,  and  the 
religion  of  Egypt,  that  element  of  life  which  always 
receives  the  stamp  of  its  environment,  shows  no  trace 
of  desert  life.  The  affinities  observable  in  the  language 
are  confirmed  in  case  of  the  Libyans  by  the  surviving 
products  of  archaic  civilization  in  the  Nile  valley,  such 
as  some  of  the  early  pottery,  which  closely  resembles 
that  still  made  by  the  Libyan  Kabyles.  Again  the  rep- 
resentations of  the  early  Puntites,  or  Somali  people,  on 
the  Egyptian  monuments,  show  striking  resemblances 
to  the  Egyptians  themselves.  The  examination  of  the 
bodies  exhumed  from  archaic  burials  in  the  Nile  valley, 
which  we  had  hoped  might  bring  further  evidence  for 
the  settlement  of  the  ethnic  problem,  has,  however, 
produced  such  diversity  of  opinion  among  the  physical 
anthropologists,  as  to  render  it  impossible  for  the 
historian  to  obtain  decisive  results  from  their  researches. 
It  has,  however,  been  sho^vn  that  the  prehistoric  and 
the  historic  Egyptians  as  now  found  in  the  ancient 
cemeteries  are  identical  in  race. 

29.  As  found  in  the  earliest  burials  to-day,  the  pre- 
dynastic  Egyptians  were  a  dark-haired  people,  already 
possessed  of  the  rudiments  of  civilization.  The  men 
wore  a  skin  over  the  shoulders,  sometimes  skin  drawers, 
and  again  only  a  short  white  linen  kilt;  while  the 
women  were  clothed  in  long  garments  of  some  textile, 
probably  linen,  reaching  from  the  shoulders  to  the 
ankles.  Statuettes  of  both  sexes  w^ithout  clothing 
whatever  are,  however,  very  common.  Sandals  were 
not  unknown.    They  occasionally  tattooed  their  bodies, 


EARLIEST  EGYPT 


31 


and  they  also  wrought  ornaments  such  as  rings,  brace- 
lets and  pendants  of  stone,  ivory  and  bone;  with  beads 
of  flint,  quartz,  carnelian,  agate  and  the  like.  The 
women  dressed  their  hair  with  ornamented  ivory  combs 
and  pins.  For  the  eye-  and  face-paint  necessary  for 
the  toilet  they  had  palettes  of  car^^ed  slate  on  which 
the  green  colour  was  ground.  They  were  able  to  build 
dwellings  of  wattle,  sometimes  smeared  with  mud,  and 
probably  later  of  sun-dried  brick.  In  the  furnishing 
of  these  houses  they  displayed  considerable  mechanical 
skill,  and  a  rudimentary  artistic  taste.  They  ate  with 
ivory  spoons,  sometimes  even  richly  carv^ed  with  figures 
of  animals  in  the  round,  marching  along  the  handle. 
Although  the  wheel  was  at  first  unknown  to  them,  they 
produced  fine  pottery  of  the  most  varied  forms  in  vast 
quantities.  The  museums  of  Europe  and  America  are 
now  filled  with  their  polished  red  and  black  ware,  or  a 
variety  with  incised  geometrical  designs,  sometimes  in 
basket  patterns,  while  another  style  of  great  importance 
to  us  is  painted  with  rude  representations  of  boats,  men, 
animals,  birds,  fish  or  trees.  While  they  made  no  ob- 
jects of  glass,  they  understood  the  art  of  glazing  beads, 
plaques  and  the  like.  Crude  statuettes  in  wood,  ivory, 
or  stone,  represent  the  beginnings  of  that  plastic  art 
which  was  to  achieve  such  triumphs  in  the  early  dy- 
nastic age;  and  three  large  stone  statues  of  Min,  found 
by  Petrie  at  Coptos,  display  the  rude  strength  of  the 
predynastic  civilization  of  which  we  are  now  speaking. 
The  art  of  the  prolific  potter  was  obliged  to  give  way 
slowly  to  the  artificer  in  stone,  who  finally  produced 
excellent  stone  vessels,  which,  on  gaining  the  use  of 
copper  tools,  he  rapidly  improved  toward  the  end  of  the 
predynastic  period,  when  his  bowls  and  jars  in  the 
hardest  stones,  like  the  diorites  and  porphyries,  display 


32 


INTRODUCTION 


magnificent  work.  The  most  cunningly  wrought  flints 
that  have  ever  been  found  among  any  people  belong  to 
this  age.  The  makers  were  ultimately  able  to  affix 
carved  ivory  hafts,  and  with  equal  skill  they  put  together 
Btone  and  flint  axes,  flint-headed  fish-spears  and  the 
like.  The  war  mace  with  pear-shaped  head,  as  found 
also  in  Babylonia,  is  characteristic  of  the  age.  Side  by 
side  with  such  weapons  and  implements  they  also  pro- 
duced and  used  weapons  and  implements  of  copper. 
It  is  indeed  the  age  of  the  slow  transition  from  stone  to 
copper.    Gold,  silver  and  lead,  while  rare,  were  in  use. 

30.  In  the  fruitful  Nile  valley  we  cannot  think  of 
such  a  people  as  other  than  chiefly  agricultural;  and 
the  fact  that  they  emerge  into  historical  times  as  agri- 
culturalists, with  an  ancient  religion  of  vastly  remote 
prehistoric  origin,  whose  symbols  and  outward  mani- 
festations clearly  betray  the  primitive  fancies  of  an 
agricultural  and  pastoral  people — all  this  would  lead 
to  the  same  conclusion.  In  the  unsubdued  jungles  of 
the  Nile,  animal  life  was  of  course  much  more  plentiful 
at  that  time  than  now;  the  elephant,  giraffe,  hippo- 
potamus and  the  strange  okapi,  which  was  deified  as 
the  god  Set,  wandered  through  the  jungles,  though  all 
these  animals  were  later  extinct.  These  early  men 
were  therefore  great  hunters,  as  well  as  skilful  fisher- 
men. They  pursued  the  most  formidable  game  of  the 
desert,  like  the  lion  or  the  wild  ox,  with  bows  and 
arrows;  and  in  light  boats  they  attacked  the  hippo- 
potamus and  the  crocodile  with  harpoons  and  lances. 
They  commemorated  these  and  like  deeds  in  rude  pict- 
ures incised  on  the  rocks,  where  they  are  still  found 
in  the  Nile  valley,  covered  with  a  heavy  brown  patina 
of  weathering,  such  as  historic  sculptures  never  display; 
thus  showing  their  vast  age. 


EARLIEST  EGYPT 


33 


31.  Their  industries  may  have  resulted  in  rudi- 
mentary commerce  for,  besides  their  small  hunting- 
boats,  they  built  vessels  of  considerable  size  on  the  Nile, 
apparently  propelled  by  many  oars  and  guided  by  a 
large  rudder.  Sailing  ships  were  rare,  but  they  were 
not  unknown.  Their  vessels  bore  standards,  probablv 
indicating  the  place  from  which  each  hailed,  for  among 
them  appear  what  may  be  the  crossed  arrows  of  the 
goddess  Neit  of  Sais,  while  an  elephant  immediately 
suggests  the  later  Elephantine.  These  ensigns  are,  in 
some  cases,  strikingly  similar  to  those  later  employed 
in  hieroglyphic  as  the  standards  of  the  local  communi- 
ties, and  their  presence  on  the  early  ships  suggests  the 
existence  of  such  communities  in  those  prehistoric  days. 
The  later  administrative  or  feudal  divisions  of  the 
country  in  historic  times,  the  nomes,  as  the  Greeks 
called  them,  to  which  we  shall  often  have  occasion  to 
refer,  are  likely  to  have  been  surs'ivals  of  such  prehis- 
toric petty  states  as  these  standards  suggest.  If  this 
be  true,  there  were  probably  some  twenty  such  states 
distributed  along  the  river  in  Upper  Egypt.  However 
this  may  be,  these  people  were  already  at  a  stage  of 
civilization  where  considerable  towns  appear  and  city- 
states,  as  in  Babylonia,  must  have  developed,  each  with 
its  chief  or  dynast,  its  local  god,  worshipped  in  a  crude 
sanctuary;  and  its  market  to  which  the  tributary,  out- 
lying country  was  attracted.  The  long  process  by 
which  such  communities  grew  up  can  be  only  surmised 
from  the  analogy  of  similar  developments  elsewhere, 
for  the  small  kingdoms  and  city-states,  out  of  which 
the  nation  was  ultimately  consolidated,  do  not  fall 
within  the  historic  age,  as  in  Babylonia. 

32.  The  gradual  fusion  which  finally  merged  these 
petty  states  into  two  kingdoms:  one  in  the  Delta,  and 


34 


INTRODUCTION 


the  other  comprising  the  states  of  the  valley  above,  is 
likewise  a  process  of  which  we  shall  never  know  the 
course.  Of  its  heroes  and  its  conquerors,  its  wars  and 
conquests,  not  an  echo  will  ever  reach  us;  nor  is  there 
the  slightest  indication  of  the  length  of  time  consumed 
by  this  process.  It  will  hardly  have  been  concluded, 
however,  before  4000  B.  c.  Our  knowledge  of  the 
two  kingdoms  which  emerged  at  the  end  of  this  long 
prehistoric  age  is  but  slightly  more  satisfactory.  The 
Delta  was,  through  the  historic  age,  open  to  inroads  of 
the  Libyans  who  dwelt  upon  the  west  of  it;  and  the  con- 
stant influx  of  people  from  this  source  gave  the  western 
Delta  a  distinctly  Libyan  character  which  it  preserved 
even  down  to  the  time  of  Herodotus.  At  the  earliest  mo- 
ment, when  the  monuments  reveal  the  conditions  in  the 
Delta,  the  Pharaoh  is  contending  with  the  Libyan  in- 
vaders, and  the  earlier  kingdom  of  the  North  will  there- 
fore have  been  strongly  Libyan,  if  indeed  it  did  not  owe 
its  origin  to  this  source.  Reliefs  recently  discovered  at 
Abusir  show  four  Libyan  chieftains  wearing  on  their 
brows  the  royal  urseus  serpent  of  the  Pharaohs,  to 
whom  it  therefore  descended  from  some  early  Libyan 
king  of  the  Delta.  The  temple  at  Sais,  in  the  western 
Delta,  the  chief  centre  of  Libyan  influence  in  Egypt, 
bore  the  name  "House  of  the  King  of  Lower  Egypt 
(the  Delta),  and  the  emblem  of  Neit,  its  chief  goddess 
was  tattooed  by  the  Libyans  upon  their  arms.  It  may 
therefore  have  been  an  early  residence  of  a  Libyan 
king  of  the  Delta,  although  the  capital  of  the  North 
was  traditionally  Buto.  As  its  coat  of  arms  or  symbol 
the  Northern  Kingdom  employed  a  tuft  of  papyrus 
plant,  which  grew  so  plentifully  in  its  marshes  as  to 
be  distinctive  of  it.  The  king  himself  was  designated 
a  bee,  and  wore  upon  his  head  a  red  crown, 


EARLIEST  EGYPT 


35 


both  in  colour  and  shape  pecuhar  to  his  kingdom. 
All  of  these  symbols  are  very  common  in  later  hiero- 
glyphic. Red  was  the  distinctive  colour  of  the  north- 
ern kingdom  and  its  treasury  was  called  the  ''Red 
House." 

33.  Unfortunately  the  Delta  is  so  deeply  overlaid 
with  deposits  of  Nile  mud  that  the  material  remains 
of  its  earliest  civilization  are  buried  forever  from  our 
reach.  That  civilization  was  probably  earlier  and 
more  advanced  than  that  of  the  valley  above.  Already 
in  the  forty-third  century  b.  c.  the  men  of  the  Delta 
had  discovered  the  year  of  three  hundred  and  sixty-five 
days  and  they  introduced  a  calendar  year  of  this  length, 
beginning  on  the  day  when  Sirius  rose  at  sunrise,  as 
determined  in  the  latitude  of  the  sotithern  Delta,  where 
these  earliest  astronomers  lived,  in  4241  b.  c.  (MC, 
38 ff.).  It  is  the  civilization  of  the  Delta, therefore,  which 
furnishes  us  with  the  earliest  fixed  date  in  the  history 
of  the  world.  It  was  thus  also  these  men  of  the  Delta 
who  furnished  the  modern  civilized  world  with  its 
calendar,  which,  as  they  devised  it,  with  twelve  thirty- 
day  months  and  five  intercalary  feast  days,  was  the 
only  practical  calendar  known  in  antiquity.  The  year 
began  on  that  day  when  Sirius  first  appeared  on  the 
eastern  horizon  at  sunrise  (the  heliacal  rising),  which  in 
our  calendar  was  on  the  nineteenth  of  July  (Julian). 
But  as  this  calendar  year  was  in  reality  about  a  quarter 
of  a  day  shorter  than  the  solar  year,  it  therefore  gained 
a  full  day  every  four  years,  thus  slowly  revolving  on  the 
astronomical  year,  passing  entirely  around  it  once  in 
fourteen  hundred  and  sixty  years,  only  to  begin  the 
revolution  again.  An  astronomical  event  like  the 
heliacal  rising  of  Sirius,  when  dated  in  terms  of  the 
Egyptian  calendar,  may  therefore  be  computed  and 


36 


INTRODUCTION 


dated  within  four  years  in  terms  of  our  reckoning,  that 
is,  in  years  b.  c. 

34.  The  kingdom  of  Upper  Egypt  was  more  dis- 
tinctively Egyptian  than  that  of  the  Delta.  It  had  its 
capital  at  Nekheb,  modern  El  Kab,  and  its  standard  or 
symbol  was  a  lily  plant,  while  another  southern  plant 
served  as  the  ensign  of  the  king,  who  was  further  dis- 
tinguished by  a  tall  white  crown,  white  being  the  colour 
of  the  Southern  Kingdom.  Its  treasury  was  therefore 
known  as  the  "White  House."  There  was  a  royal 
residence  across  the  river  from  Nekheb,  called  Nekhen, 
the  later  Hieraconpolis,  while  corresponding  to  it  in 
the  Northern  Kingdom  was  a  suburb  of  Buto,  called  Pe. 
Each  capital  had  its  patroness  or  protecting  goddess: 
Buto,  the  serpent-goddess,  in  the  North;  and  in  the 
South  the  vulture-goddess,  Nekhbet.  But  at  both 
capitals  the  hawk-god  Horus  was  worshipped  as  the 
distinctive  patron  deity  of  both  kings.  The  people  of 
the  time  believed  in  a  life  hereafter,  subject  to  wants  of 
the  same  nature  as  those  of  the  present  life.  Their 
cemeteries  are  widely  distributed  along  the  margin  of 
the  desert  in  Upper  Egypt,  and  of  late  years  thousands 
of  interments  have  been  excavated.  The  tomb  is  usu- 
ally a  flat-bottomed  oval  or  rectangular  pit,  in  which 
the  body,  doubled  into  the  "contracted"  or  "embry- 
onic" posture,  lies  on  its  side.  In  the  earliest  burials 
it  is  wrapped  in  a  skin,  but  later  also  in  woven  fabric; 
there  is  no  trace  of  embalmment.  Beneath  the  body 
is  frequently  a  mat  of  plaited  rushes;  it  often  has  in 
the  hand  or  at  the  breast  a  slate  palette  for  grinding 
face-paint,  the  green  malachite  for  which  lies  near  in  a 
small  bag.  The  body  is  besides  accompanied  by  other 
articles  of  toilet  or  of  adornment  and  is  surrounded  by 
jars  of  pottery  or  stone  containing  ash  or  organic 


EARLIEST  EGYPT 


37 


matter,  the  remains  of  food,  drink  and  ointment  for  the 
deceased  in  the  hereafter.  Not  only  were  the  toilet  and 
other  bodily  wants  of  the  deceased  thus  provided  for, 
but  he  was  also  given  his  flint  weapons  or  bone-tipped 
harpoons  that  he  might  replenish  his  larder  from  the 
chase.  Clay  models  of  objects  which  he  might  need 
were  also  given  him,  especially  boats.  The  pits  are 
sometimes  roughly  roofed  over  with  branches,  covered 
with  a  heap  of  desert  sand  and  gravel,  forming  rudi- 
mentary tombs,  and  later  they  came  to  be  lined  with 
crude,  sun-dried  brick.  Sometimes  a  huge,  roughly 
hemispherical  bowl  of  pottery  was  inverted  over  the 
body  as  it  lay  in  the  pit.  These  burials  furnish  the  sole 
contemporary  material  for  our  study  of  the  predynastic 
age.  The  gods  of  the  hereafter  were  appealed  to  in 
prayers  and  magical  formulae,  which  eventually  took 
conventional  and  traditional  form  in  writing.  A  thou- 
sand years  later  in  the  dynastic  age  fragments  of  these 
mortuary  texts  are  found  in  use  in  the  pyramids  of  the 
Fifth  and  Sixth  Dynasties  (see  pp.  65-8).  Pepi  I,  a 
king  of  the  Sixth  Dynasty,  in  his  rebuilding  of  the 
Dendereh  temple,  claimed  to  be  reproducing  a  plan  of 
a  sanctuary  of  the  predynastic  kings  on  that  spot. 
Temples  of  some  sort  they  therefore  evidently  had. 

35.  \^^lile  they  thus  early  possessed  all  the  rudiments 
of  material  culture,  the  people  of  this  age  developed  a 
system  of  writing  also.  The  computations  necessary 
for  the  discovery  and  use  of  the  calendar  show  a  use  of 
writing  in  the  last  centuries  of  the  fifth  millennium  B.  c. 
It  is  shown  also  by  the  fact  that  nearly  a  thousand  years 
later  the  scribes  of  the  Fifth  Dynasty  were  able  to  copy 
a  long  list  of  the  kings  of  the  North,  and  perhaps  those 
of  the  South  also  (BAR,  I,  76-167);  while  the  mortuary 
texts  to  which  we  have  referred  will  not  have  survived 


38 


INTRODUCTION 


a  thousand  years  without  having  been  committed  to 
writing  in  the  same  way.  The  hieroglyphs  for  the 
Northern  Kingdom,  for  its  king,  and  for  its  treasury 
cannot  have  arisen  at  one  stroke  w^ith  the  first  king  of 
the  dynastic  age;  but  must  have  been  in  use  long 
before  the  rise  of  the  First  Dynasty;  while  the  presence 
of  a  cursive  linear  hand  at  the  beginning  of  the  dy- 
nasties is  conclusive  evidence  that  the  system  was  not 
then  a  recent  innovation. 

36.  Of  the  deeds  of  these  remote  kings  of  the  North 
and  South,  who  passed  away  before  three  thousand  four 
hundred  B.C.,  we  know  nothing.  Their  tombs  have 
never  been  discovered,  a  fact  which  accounts  for  the 
lack  of  any  written  monuments  among  the  contem- 
porary documents,  all  of  which  come  from  tombs  of 
the  poorer  classes,  such  as  contain  no  writing  even  in 
the  dynastic  age.  Seven  names  of  the  kings  of  the 
Delta,  like  Seka,  Khayu,  or  Thesh,  alone  of  all  the  line 
have  survived ;  but  of  the  Southern  Kingdom  not  even 
a  royal  name  has  descended  to  us,  unless  it  be  that  of 
the  Scorpion,  which,  occurring  on  some  few  remains 
of  this  early  age,  was  probably  that  of  one  of  the  power- 
ful chieftains  of  the  South  (BAR,  I,  166).  The  scribes 
of  the  Fifth  Dynasty  who  drew  up  this  list  of  kings, 
some  eight  hundred  years  after  the  line  had  passed 
away,  seem  to  have  known  only  the  royal  names,  and 
were  unable  to,  or  at  least  did  not  record,  any  of  their 
achievements  (BAR,  I,  90).  As  a  class  these  kings  of 
the  North  and  South  were  known  to  their  posterity  as 
the  ''worshippers  of  Horus";  and  as  ages  passed  they 
became  half-mythic  figures,  gradually  to  be  endowed 
with  semi-divine  attributes,  until  they  were  regarded 
as  the  demi-gods  who  succeeded  the  divine  dynasties, 
the  great  gods  who  had  ruled  Egypt  in  the  beginning 


EARLIEST  EGYPT 


89 


(SU,  III).  Their  original  character  as  deceased  kmgs^ 
as  known  to  the  earher  dynasties,  led  to  their  being 
considered  especially  as  a  line  of  the  divine  dead  who 
had  ruled  over  the  land  before  the  accession  of  human 
kings;  and  in  the  historical  work  of  Manetho  they 
appear  simply  as  ''the  dead."  Thus  their  real  histor- 
ical character  was  finally  completely  sublimated,  then 
to  merge  into  unsubstantial  myth,  and  the  ancient  kings 
of  the  North  and  the  South  were  worshipped  in  the 
capitals  where  they  had  once  ruled. 

37.  The  next  step  in  the  long  and  slow  evolution  of 
national  unity  was  the  union  of  the  North  and  the  South. 
The  tradition  which  was  still  current  in  the  days  of  the 
Greeks  in  Eg^'pt,  to  the  effect  that  the  two  kingdoms 
were  united  by  a  king  named  ^lenes,  is  fully  confirmed 
by  the  evidence  of  the  early  monuments.  The  figure  of 
Menes,  but  a  few  years  since  as  vague  and  elusive  as 
those  of  the  ''worshippers  of  Horus,"  who  preceded  him, 
has  now  been  clothed  with  unmistakable  reality,  and 
he  at  last  steps  forth  into  history  to  head  the  long  line 
of  Pharaohs  who  have  yet  to  pass  us  in  review.  It 
must  have  been  a  skilful  warrior  and  a  vigorous  ad- 
ministrator, who  thus  gathered  the  resources  of  the 
Southern  Kingdom  so  well  in  hand  that  he  was  able 
to  invade  and  conquer  the  Delta,  and  thus  merge  the 
two  kingdoms  into  one  nation,  completing  the  long 
process  of  centralization  which  had  been  going  on  for 
many  centuries.  His  native  city  was  Thinis,  an  ob- 
scure place  m  the  vicinity  of  Abydos,  which  was  not 
near  enough  to  the  centre  of  his  new  kingdom  to  serve 
as  his  residence,  and  we  can  easily  credit  the  narrative 
of  Herodotus  that  he  built  a  great  dam,  diverting  the 
course  of  the  Nile  above  the  site  of  Memphis  that  he 
might  gain  room  there  for  a  city.    This  stronghold, 


40 


INTRODUCTION 


perhaps  not  yet  called  Memphis,  was  probably  known 
as  the  "White  Wall,"  in  reference  of  course  to  the 
White  Kingdom,  whose  power  it  represented.  If  we 
may  believe  the  tradition  of  Herodotus'  time,  it  was 
from  this  place,  situated  so  favourably  on  the  border 
between  the  two  kingdoms,  that  Menes  probably  gov- 
erned the  new  nation  which  he  had  created.  He  carried 
his  arms  also  southward  against  northern  Nubia  (NGH, 
20),  which  then  extended  below  the  first  cataract  as  far 
northward  as  the  nome  of  Edfu.  According  to  the 
tradition  of  Manetho,  he  was  blessed  with  a  long  reign, 
and  the  memory  of  his  great  achievement  was  imperish- 
able, as  we  have  seen.  He  was  buried  in  Upper  Egypt, 
either  at  Abydos  near  his  native  Thinis,  or  some  dis- 
tance above  it  near  the  modern  village  of  Negadeh, 
where  a  large  brick  tomb,  probably  his,  still  survives. 
In  it  and  similar  tombs  of  his  successors  at  Abydos 
written  monuments  of  his  reign  have  been  found,  and 
even  a  golden  fragment  of  his  royal  adornments,  bear- 
ing his  name,  which  this  ancient  founder  of  the  Egyptian 
state  wore  upon  his  person. 

38.  The  kings  of  this  remote  protodynastic  age  are  no 
longer  merely  a  series  of  names  as  but  a  few  years  since 
they  still  were.  As  a  group  at  least,  we  know  much 
of  their  life  and  its  surroundings;  although  we  shall 
never  be  able  to  discern  them  as  possessed  of  distinguish- 
able personality.  They  blend  together  without  distinc- 
tion as  children  of  their  age.  The  outward  insignia 
which  all  alike  employed  were  now  accommodated  to 
the  united  kingdom.  The  king's  favourite  title  was 
"Horus,"  by  which  he  identified  himself  as  the  suc- 
cessor of  the  great  god  who  had  once  ruled  over  the 
kingdom.  Everywhere,  on  royal  documents,  seals  and 
the  like,  appeared  the  Horus-hawk  as  the  symbol  of 


EARLIEST  EGYPT 


41 


royalty.  He  was  mounted  upon  a  rectangle  represent- 
ing the  fa9ade  of  a  building,  probably  the  king's  palace, 
within  which  was  -vsTitten  the  king's  official  name.  The 
other  or  personal  name  of  the  ruler  was  preceded  by 
the  bee  of  the  North  and  the  plant  of  the  Southern 
King,  to  indicate  that  he  had  now  absorbed  both  titles; 
while  with  these  two  symbols  there  often  appeared  also 
Nekhbet,  the  vulture-goddess  of  El  Kab,  the  southern 
capital,  side  by  side  with  Buto,  the  serpent-goddess  of 
the  northern  capital.  On  the  sculptures  of  the  time, 
the  protecting  vulture  hovers  with  outspread  wings 
over  the  head  of  the  king,  but  as  he  felt  himself  still 
as  primarily  king  of  Upper  Egypt,  it  was  not  until 
later  that  he  wore  the  serpent  of  the  North,  the  sacred 
urjeus  upon  his  forehead.  Similarly  Set  sometimes  ap- 
pears with  Horus,  preceding  the  king's  personal  name, 
the  two  gods  thus  representing  the  North  and  the  South, 
dividing  the  land  between  them  in  accordance  with  the 
myth  which  we  shall  later  have  occasion  to  discuss. 
The  monarch  wore  the  crown  of  either  kingdom,  and  he 
is  often  spoken  of  as  the  double  lord."  Thus  his 
dominion  over  a  united  Egypt  was  constantly  pro- 
claimed. 

39.  We  see  the  king  on  ceremonious  occasions  ap- 
pearing in  some  state,  preceded  by  four  standard- 
bearers  and  accompanied  by  his  chancellor,  personal 
attendants,  or  a  scribe,  and  two  fan-bearers.  He  wore 
the  white  crown  of  Upper  or  the  red  crown  of  Lower 
Egypt,  or  even  a  curious  combination  of  the  crowns  of 
both  kingdoms,  and  a  simple  garment  suspended  by  a 
strap  over  one  shoulder,  to  which  a  lion's  tail  was  ap- 
pended behind.  So  dressed  and  so  attended  he  con- 
ducted triumphant  celebrations  of  his  victories  or  led 
the  ceremonies  at  the  opening  of  canals  or  the  inaugura- 


42 


INTRODUCTION 


ti&n  ot  public  works.  On  the  thirtieth  anniversary  oi 
his  appointment  by  his  father  as  crown  prince  to  the 
heirship  of  the  kingdom,  the  king  celebrated  a  great 
jubilee  called  the  "Feast  of  Sed/'  a  word  meaning 
*°tailj'^  and  perhaps  commemorating  his  assumption 
of  the  royal  lion's  tail  at  his  appointment  thirty  years 
before.  He  was  a  mighty  hunter,  and  recorded  with 
pride  an  achievement  like  the  slaying  of  a  hippopotamus. 
His  weapons  were  costly  and  elaborate,  as  we  shall  see. 
His  several  palaces  each  bore  a  name,  and  the  royal 
estate  possessed  gardens  and  vineyards,  the  latter  being 
also  named  and  carefully  administered  by  officials  who 
were  responsible  for  the  income  therefrom. 

40.  The  furniture  of  such  a  palace,  even  in  this  re- 
mote age,  was  magnificent  and  of  fine  artistic  quality. 
Among  it  were  vessels  exquisitely  wrought  in  some 
eighteen  or  twenty  different  varieties  of  stone,  espe- 
cially alabaster;  even  in  such  refractory  material  as 
diorite,  superb  bowls  were  ground  to  translucent  thin- 
ness, and  jars  of  rock  crystal  were  carved  with  match- 
less precision  to  represent  natural  objects.  The  pot- 
tery, on  the  other  hand,  perhaps  because  of  the  perfec- 
tion of  the  stone  vessels,  is  inferior  to  that  of  the  pre- 
dynastic  age.  The  less  substantial  furniture  has  for 
the  most  part  perished,  but  chests  of  ebony  inlaid  with 
ivory  and  stools  with  legs  of  ivory  magnificently  carv^ed 
to  represent  bull's  legs,  have  survived  in  fragments. 
Glaze  was  now  more  thoroughly  mastered  than  before, 
and  incrustation  with  glazed  plaques  and  ivory  tablets 
was  practiced.  The  coppersmith  furnished  the  palace 
with  finely  wrought  bowls,  ewers,  and  other  vessels  of 
copper;  while  he  materially  aided  in  the  perfection  of 
stone  vase-making  by  the  production  of  excellent  copper 
tools.    The  goldsmith  combined  with  a  high  degree  of 


EARLIEST  EGYPT 


43 


technical  skill  also  exquisite  taste,  and  produced  for 
the  king's  person  and  for  the  ladies  of  the  royal  house- 
hold magnificent  regalia  in  gold  and  precious  stones, 
involving  the  most  delicate  soldering  of  the  metal,  a 
process  accomplished  with  a  skill  of  which  even  a 
modern  workman  would  not  be  ashamed.  While  the 
products  of  the  industrial  craftsman  had  thus  risen  to  a 
point  of  excellence  such  that  they  claim  a  place  as 
works  of  art,  w^e  find  that  the  rude  carvings  and  draw- 
ings of  the  predynastic  people  have  now  developed 
into  reliefs  and  statues  which  clearly  betray  the  pro- 
fessional artist.  The  kings  dedicated  in  the  temples, 
especially  in  that  of  Horus  at  Hieraconpolis,  ceremo- 
nial slate  palettes,  maces  and  vessels,  bearing  reliefs 
which  display  a  sure  and  practiced  hand.  The  human 
and  animal  figures  are  done  with  surprising  freedom 
and  vigour,  proclaiming  an  art  long  since  conscious  of 
itself  and  centuries  removed  from  the  naive  efforts  of  a 
primitive  people.  By  the  time  of  the  Third  Dynasty 
the  conventions  of  civilized  life  had  laid  a  heavy  hand 
upon  this  art;  and  although  finish  and  power  of  faith- 
ful delineation  had  reached  a  level  far  surpassing  that 
of  the  Hieraconpolis  slates,  the  old  freedom  had  disap- 
peared. In  the  astonishing  statues  of  King  Khasekhem 
at  Hieraconpolis,  the  rigid  canons  which  ruled  the  art  of 
the  Old  Kingdom  are  already  clearly  discernible. 

41.  The  wreck  of  all  this  splendour,  amid  which  these 
antique  kings  lived,  has  been  rescued  by  Petrie  from 
their  tombs  at  Abydos.  These  tombs  are  the  result  of 
a  natural  evolution  from  the  pits  in  which  the  predy- 
nastic people  buried  their  dead.  The  pit,  now  rec- 
tangular and  brick-lined,  has  been  enlarged;  while  the 
surrounding  jars  of  food  and  drink  have  developed  into 
a  series  of  small  chambers  surrounding  the  central 


44 


INTRODUCTION 


room  or  pit,  in  which,  doubtless,  the  body  lay.  The 
whole  was  roofed  with  heavy  timbers  and  planking, 
probably  surmounted  by  a  heap  of  sand,  and  on  the 
east  front  were  set  up  two  tall  narrow  stelae  bearing  the 
king's  name.  Access  to  the  central  chamber  was  had 
by  a  brick  stairway  descending  through  one  side.  The 
king's  toilet  furniture,  a  rich  equipment  of  bowls,  jars 
and  vessels,  metal  vases  and  ewers,  his  personal  orna- 
ments, and  all  that  was  necessary  for  the  maintenance 
of  royal  state  in  the  hereafter  w^ere  deposited  w4th  his 
body  in  this  tomb;  while  the  smaller  surrounding 
chambers  were  filled  with  a  liberal  supply  of  food  and 
w'me  in  enormous  pottery  jars,  sealed  with  huge  cones 
of  Nile  mud  mixed  with  straw,  and  impressed  while 
soft  with  the  name  of  the  king,  or  of  the  estate  or  vine- 
yard from  which  they  came.  The  revenue  in  food  and 
wine  from  certain  of  the  king's  estates  was  diverted  and 
established  as  permanent  income  of  the  tomb  to  main- 
tain for  all  time  the  table  supply  of  the  deceased  king 
and  of  his  household  and  adherents,  whose  tombs,  to 
the  number  of  one  or  two  hundred,  were  grouped  about 
his  own.  Thus  he  was  surrounded  in  death  by  those 
who  had  been  his  companions  in  life;  his  women,  his 
body-guard,  and  even  the  dwarf,  whose  dances  had 
diverted  his  idle  hours,  all  sleep  beside  their  lord  that 
he  may  continue  in  the  hereafter  the  state  with  which 
he  had  been  environed  on  earth.  Thus  early  began 
the  elaborate  arrangements  of  the  Egyptian  upper 
classes  for  the  proper  maintenance  of  the  deceased  in 
the  life  hereafter. 

42.  This  desire  to  create  a  permanent  abiding-place 
for  the  royal  dead  exerted  a  powerful  influence  in  the 
development  of  the  art  of  building.  Already  in  the 
First  Dynasty  we  find  a  granite  floor  in  one  of  the  royal 


EARLIEST  EGYPT 


45 


tombs,  that  of  Usephais,  and  toward  the  end  of  the 
Second  Dynasty  the  surrounding  brick  chambers  of 
King  Khasekhemui's  tomb  enclose  a  chamber  buih  of 
hewn  hmestone,  the  earhest  stone  masonry  structure 
known  in  the  history  of  man.  His  predecessor,  prob- 
ably his  father,  had  already  built  a  stone  temple  which 
he  recorded  as  a  matter  of  note  (BAR,  I,  134),  and 
Khasekhemui  himself  built  a  temple  at  Hieraconpolis, 
of  which  a  granite  door-post  has  sur^'ived. 

43.  Such  works  of  the  skilled  artificer  and  builder 
(for  a  number  of  royal  architects  were  already  attached 
to  the  court)  indicate  a  well-ordered  and  highly  organ- 
ized state;  but  of  its  character  little  can  be  discerned 
from  the  scanty  materials  at  our  command.  The 
king's  chief  assistant  and  minister  in  government  seems 
to  have  been  a  chancellor,  whom  we  have  seen  attend- 
ing him  on  state  occasions.  The  officials  whom  we 
later  find  as  nobles  with  judicial  functions,  attached  to 
the  two  royal  residences  of  the  North  and  South,  Pe 
and  Nekhen,  already  existed  under  these  earliest 
dynasties,  indicating  an  organized  administration  of 
judicial  and  juridical  affairs.  There  was  a  body  of  fis- 
cal officials,  whose  seals  we  find  upon  payments  of 
naturalia  to  the  royal  tombs,  impressed  upon  the  clay 
jar-sealings;  while  a  fragment  of  a  scribe's  accounts 
evidently  belonging  to  such  an  administration,  was 
found  in  the  Abydos  royal  tombs.  The  endowment 
of  these  tombs  with  a  regularly  paid  income  clearly 
indicates  a  fiscal  organization,  of  which  several  offices, 
like  the  "provision  office,"  are  mentioned  on  the  seals. 
In  all  probability  all  the  land  belonged  to  the  estate  of 
the  king,  by  whom  it  was  entrusted  to  a  noble  class. 
There  were  large  estates  conducted  by  these  nobles,  as 
m  the  period  which  immediately  followed;    but  en 


46 


INTRODUCTION 


what  terms  they  were  held  we  cannot  now  determine. 
The  people,  with  the  possible  exception  of  a  free  class 
of  artificers  and  tradesmen,  will  have  been  slaves  on 
these  estates.  They  lived  also  in  cities  protected  by 
heavy  walls  of  sun-dried  brick,  and  under  the  command 
of  a  local  governor.  The  chief  cities  of  the  time  were 
the  two  capitals.  El  Kab  and  Buto,  with  their  royal 
suburbs  of  Nekhen  or  Hieraconpolis,  and  Pe;  the 
"White  Wall,"  the  predecessor  of  Memphis;  Thinis, 
the  native  city  of  the  first  two  dynasties;  the  neighbour- 
ing Abydos;  Heliopolis,  Heracleopolis  and  Sais;  while 
a  number  of  less  importance  appear  in  the  Third 
Dynasty. 

44.  Every  two  years  a  ''numbering'*  of  the  royal 
possessions  was  made  throughout  the  land  by  the 
officials  of  the  treasury,  and  these  "numberings" 
served  as  a  partial  basis  for  the  chronological  reckoning. 
The  years  of  a  king's  reign  were  called,  "Year  of  the 
First  Numbering,"  "Year  ajter  the  First  Numbering," 
"Year  of  the  Second  Numbering,"  and  so  on.  An 
earlier  method  was  to  name  the  year  after  some  im- 
portant event  which  occurred  in  it,  thus:  "Year  of 
Smiting  the  Troglodytes,"  a  method  found  also  in 
early  Babylonia.  But  as  the  "numberings"  finally 
became  annual,  they  formed  a  more  convenient  basis 
for  designating  the  year,  as  habit  seemed  to  have 
deterred  the  scribes  from  numbering  the  years  them- 
selves. Such  a  system  of  government  and  adminis- 
tration as  this  of  course  could  not  operate  without  a 
method  of  wTiting,  which  we  find  in  use  both  in  elabo- 
rate hieroglyphics  and  in  the  rapid  cursive  hand  of  the 
accounting  scribe.  It  already  possessed  not  only  pho- 
netic signs  representing  a  whole  syllable  or  group  of 
consonants  but  also  the  alphabetic  signs,  each  of  which 


EARLIEST  EGYPT 


47 


stood  for  one  consonant;  true  alphabetic  letters  having 
thus  been  discovered  in  Egypt  two  thousand  five  hun- 
dred years  before  their  use  by  any  other  people.  Had 
the  Egyptian  been  less  a  creature  of  habit,  he  might 
have  discarded  his  syllabic  signs  3,500  years  before 
Christ,  and  have  written  with  an  alphabet  of  twenty- 
four  letters.  In  the  documents  of  these  early  dynasties 
the  writing  is  in  such  an  archaic  form  that  many  of  the 
scanty  fragments  which  we  possess  from  this  age  are 
as  yet  unintelligible  to  us.  Yet  it  v/as  the  medium  of 
recording  medical  and  religious  texts,  to  w^hich  in  later 
times  a  peculiar  sanctity  and  effectiveness  were  attri- 
buted. The  chief  events  of  each  year  were  also  re- 
corded in  a  few  lines  under  its  name,  and  a  series  of 
annals  covering  every  year  of  a  king's  reign  and  show- 
ing to  a  day  how  long  he  reigned  was  thus  produced. 
A  small  fragment  only  of  these  annals  has  escaped 
destruction,  the  now  famous  Palermo  Stone,  so  called 
because  it  is  at  present  in  the  museum  of  Palermo 
(B.\R,  I,  76-167;  BH,  Fig.  29). 

45.  Already  a  state  form  of  religion  was  developing, 
and  it  is  this  form  alone  of  which  we  know  anything; 
the  religion  of  the  people  having  left  little  or  no  trace. 
Even  in  the  later  dynasties  we  shall  find  little  to  say  of 
the  folk-religion,  which  was  rarely  a  matter  of  per- 
manent record.  The  royal  temple  of  Menes's  time 
was  still  a  simple  structure,  being  little  more  than  a 
shrine  or  chapel  of  wood,  with  walls  of  plaited  wattle. 
There  was  an  enclosed  court  before  it,  containing  a 
symbol  or  emblem  of  the  god  mounted  on  a  standard; 
and  in  front  of  the  enclosure  was  a  pair  of  poles,  per- 
haps the  forerunners  of  the  pair  of  stone  obelisks  which 
in  historic  times  were  erected  at  the  entrance  of  a  tem- 
ple.   By  the  second  half  of  the  Second  Dynasty,  how- 


48 


INTRODUCTION 


ever,  stone  temples  were  built,  as  we  have  seen  (BAR, 
I,  134).  The  kings  frequently  record  in  their  annals 
the  draughting  of  a  temple  plan,  or  their  superintend- 
ence of  the  ceremonious  inauguration  of  the  work  when/ 
the  ground  was  measured  and  broken  (BAR,  I,  91-- 
167).  The  great  gods  were  those  familiar  in  later 
times,  whom  we  shall  yet  have  occasion  briefly  to  dis- 
cuss; we  notice  particularly  Osiris  and  Set,  Horus  and 
Anubis,  Thoth,  Sokar,  Min,  and  Apis  a  form  of  Ptah; 
while  among  the  goddesses,  Hathor  and  Neit  are  very 
prominent.  Several  of  these,  like  Horus,  were  evi-. 
dently  the  patron  gods  of  prehistoric  kingdoms,  pre- 
ceding  the  kingdoms  of  the  North  and  South,  and  thus 
going  back  to  a  very  distant  age.  Horus,  as  under  the 
predynastic  kings,  was  the  greatest  god  of  the  united 
kingdom,  and  occupied  the  position  later  held  by  Re. 
His  temple  at  Hieraconpolis  was  especially  favoured, 
and  an  old  feast  in  his  honour,  called  the  ^'Worship  of 
Horus,"  celebrated  every  two  years,  is  regularly  re- 
corded in  the  royal  annals.  The  kings  therefore  con- 
tinued without  interruption  the  traditions  of  the  "Wor- 
shippers of  Horus,"  as  the  successors  of  whom  they 
regarded  themselves.  As  long  as  the  royal  succession 
continued  :n  the  Thinite  family,  the  worship  of  Horus 
was  carefully  observed;  but  with  the  ascendancy  of 
the  Third  Dynasty,  a  Memphite  family,  it  gradually 
gave  v/ay  and  was  neglected.  The  priestly  office  was 
maintained  of  course  as  in  the  Old  Kingdom  by  laymen, 
who  were  divided,  as  later,  into  four  orders  or  phyles. 

46.  The  more  than  four  hundred  years  during  which 
the  first  two  dynasties  ruled  must  have  been  a  period 
of  constant  and  vigorous  growth.  Of  the  seven  kings 
of  Menes's  line,  who  followed  him  during  the  first  two 
centuries  of  that  development,  we  can  identify  only  two 


EARLIEST  EGYPT 


49 


with  certainty:  Miebis  and  Usephais;  but  we  have 
contemporary  monuments  from  twelve  of  the  eighteen 
kings  who  ruled  during  this  period.  The  first  difficulty 
which  confronted  them  was  the  reconciliation  of  the 
Northern  Kingdom  and  its  complete  fusion  with  the 
larger  nation.  We  have  seen  how,  in  administration, 
the  two  kingdoms  remained  distinct,  and  hinted  that 
the  union  was  a  merely  personal  bond.  The  kings  on 
ascending  the  throne  ce^'^brated  a  feast  called  "Union 
of  the  Two  Lands  (BAK,  I,  140),  by  which  the  first 
year  of  each  king's  reign  was  characterized  and  named. 
This  union,  thus  shown  to  be  so  fresh  in  their  minds, 
could  not  at  first  be  made  effectual.  The  North  re- 
belled again  and  again,  causing  bloody  wars,  in  which 
the  kings  of  the  South,  Narmer,  Neterimu,  and  Khase- 
khem  deported  myriads  of  captives  and  cattle.  We  find 
the  splendid  memorials  of  their  victories  in  the  Horus 
temple  at  Hieraconpolis  (QH,  I,  pi.  36-41;  BAH,  I, 
124).  The  later  m}i;hology  attributed  a  lasting  recon- 
ciliation of  the  two  kingdoms  to  Osiris  (Louvre  Stela, 
C.  2). 

47.  ^Miile  the  severe  methods  employed  against  the 
North  must  have  seriously  crippled  its  economic  pros- 
perity, that  of  the  nation  as  a  whole  probably  continued 
to  increase.  The  kings  were  constantly  laying  out  new 
estates  and  building  new  palaces,  temples  and  strong- 
holds. Public  works,  like  the  opening  of  irrigation 
canals  or  the  wall  of  ^lenes  above  Memphis,  show  their 
solicitude  for  the  economic  resources  of  the  kingdom, 
as  well  as  a  skill  in  engineering  and  a  high  conception  of 
government  such  as  we  cannot  but  greatly  admire  in 
an  age  so  remote.  They  were  able  also  to  undertake 
the  earliest  enterprises  of  which  we  know  in  foreign 
lands.    King  Semerldiet,  early  in  the  dynastic  age,  and 


50 


INTRODUCTION 


probably  during  the  First  Dynasty,  carried  on  mining 
operations  in  the  copper  regions  of  the  Sinaitic  penin- 
sula, in  the  Wady  Maghara.  His  expedition  was  ex- 
posed to  the  depredations  of  the  wild  tribes  of  Beduin, 
who,  already  in  this  remote  age,  peopled  those  districts ; 
and  he  recorded  his  punishment  of  them  in  a  relief 
upon  the  rocks  of  the  wadi  (WRS,  p.  96).  It  is  the 
oldest  historical  relief  known  to  us.  An  ivory  tablet  of 
King  Usephais,  and  a  reference  under  the  reign  of 
Miebis  on  the  Palermo  Stone  commemorates  other  vic- 
tories over  the  same  people  (BAR,  I,  104).  Indeed 
there  are  indications  that  the  kings  of  this  time  main- 
tained foreign  relations  with  far  remoter  peoples.  In 
their  tombs  have  been  found  fragments  of  a  peculiar, 
non-Egyptian  pottery,  closely  resembling  the  orna- 
mented ^Egean  ware  produced  by  the  island  peoples  of 
the  northern  Mediterranean  in  pre-Mycenaean  times. 
If  this  pottery  was  placed  in  these  tombs  at  the  time  of 
the  original  burials,  there  were  commercial  relations 
between  Egypt  and  the  northern  ]\Iediterranean  peoples 
in  the  fourth  millennium  before  Christ.  We  find  an- 
other foreign  connection  in  the  north,  in  the  occasional 
campaign  now  necessary  to  restrain  the  Libyans  on  the 
west  (QH,  I,  pi.  15,  No.  7).  In  the  south  at  the  first 
cataract,  where,  as  late  as  the  Sixth  Dynasty,  the 
Troglodyte  tribes  of  the  neighbouring  eastern  desert 
made  it  dangerous  to  operate  the  quarries  there.  King 
Usephais  of  the  First  Dynasty  was  able  to  maintain 
an  expedition  for  the  purpose  of  securing  granite  to 
pave  one  of  the  chambers  of  his  tomb  at  Abydos. 

48.  Scanty  as  are  its  surviving  monuments,  we  see 
now  gradually  taking  form  the  great  state  which  is 
soon  to  emerge  as  the  Old  Kingdom.  These  earliest 
Pharaohs  were  buried,  as  we  have  seen,  at  Abydos  or 


EARLIEST  EGYPT 


51 


in  the  vicinity,  where  nine  of  their  tombs  are  known. 
A  thousand  years  after  they  had  passed  away  these 
tombs  of  the  founders  of  the  kingdom  were  neglected 
and  forgotten,  and  as  early  as  the  tw^entieth  century 
before  Christ  that  of  King  Zer  was  mistaken  for  the 
tomb  of  Osiris  (BAR,  I,  662).  \Mien  found  in  modem 
times  it  was  buried  under  a  mountain  of  potsherds,  the 
remains  of  votive  offerings  left  there  by  centuries  of 
Osiris-worshippers.  Its  rightful  occupants  had  long 
been  torn  from  their  resting-places,  and  their  limbs, 
heavy  with  gold  and  precious  stones,  had  been  wrenched 
from  the  sockets  to  be  carried  away  by  greedy  violators 
of  the  dead.  It  was  on  some  such  occasion  that  one  of 
these  thieves  secreted  in  a  hole  in  the  wall  of  the  tomb 
the  desiccated  arm  of  Zer's  queen,  still  bearing  under 
the  close  wrappings  its  splendid  royal  bracelets.  Per- 
haps slain  in  some  brawl,  the  robber,  fortunately  for 
us,  never  returned  to  recover  his  plunder,  and  it  was 
found  there  and  brought  to  Petrie  intact  by  his  well- 
trained  workmen  in  1902. 


PART  n 
THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


IV 


EARLY  RELIGION 

49.  There  is  no  force  in  the  life  of  ancient  man  the 
influence  of  which  so  pen^ades  all  his  activities  as  does 
that  of  the  religious  faculty.  Its  fancies  explain  for  him 
the  world  about  him,  its  fears  are  his  hourly  master, 
its  hopes  his  constant  Mentor,  its  feasts  are  his  calendar, 
and  its  outward  usages  are  to  a  large  extent  the  educa- 
tion and  the  motive  toward  the  gradual  evolution  of 
art,  literature  and  science.  As  among  all  other  early 
peoples,  it  was  in  his  surroundings  that  the  Egyptian 
saw  his  gods.  The  trees  and  springs,  the  stones  and 
hill-tops,  the  birds  and  beasts  were  creatures  like  him- 
self, or  possessed  of  strange  and  uncanny  powers  of 
which  he  was  not  master.  Among  this  host  of  spirits 
animating  everything  around  him  some  were  his 
friends,  ready  to  be  propitiated  and  to  lend  him  their 
aid  and  protection;  while  others  with  craft  and  cunning 
lowered  about  his  pathway,  awaiting  an  opportunity  to 
strike  him  with  disease  and  pestilence,  and  there  was  no 
misfortune  in  the  course  of  nature  but  found  explana- 
tion in  his  mind  as  coming  from  one  of  these  evil  beings 
about  him.  Such  spirits  as  these  were  local,  each 
known  only  tc  tne  dwellers  in  a  given  locality,  and  the 
efforts  to  serve  and  propitiate  them  were  of  the  hum- 
blest and  most  primitive  character.  Of  such  worship 
we  know  littie  or  nothing  in  the  Old  Kingdom,  but 

5o 


66 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


during  the  Empire  we  shall  be  able  to  gain  fleeting 
glimpses  into  this  naive  and  long-forgotten  world.  But 
the  Egyptian  peopled  not  merely  the  local  circle  about 
him  with  such  spirits;  the  sky  above  him  and  earth 
beneath  his  feet  were  equally  before  him  for  explana- 
tion. Long  ages  of  confinement  to  his  elongated  valley, 
with  its  monotonous,  even  if  sometimes  grand  scenery, 
had  imposed  a  limited  range  upon  his  imagination; 
neither  had  he  the  qualities  of  mind  which  could  be 
stirred  by  the  world  of  nature  to  such  exquisite  fancies 
as  those  with  which  the  natural  beauties  of  Hellas  in- 
spired the  imagination  of  the  Greeks.  In  the  remote 
ages  of  that  earliest  civilization,  which  we  have  briefly 
surveyed  in  the  preceding  chapter,  the  shepherds  and 
plowmen  of  the  Nile  valley  saw  in  the  heavens  a  vast 
cow,  which  stood  athwart  the  vault,  with  head  in  the 
west,  the  earth  lying  between  fore  and  hind  feet,  while 
the  belly  of  the  animal,  studded  with  stars,  was  the 
arch  of  heaven.  The  people  of  another  locality,  how- 
ever, fancied  they  could  discern  a  colossal  female  figure 
standing  with  feet  in  the  east  and  bending  over  the  earth, 
till  she  supported  herself  upon  her  arms  in  the  far  west. 
To  others  the  sky  was  a  sea,  supported  high  above  the 
earth  with  a  pillar  at  each  of  its  four  corners.  As 
these  fancies  gained  more  than  local  credence  and  came 
into  contact  with  each  other,  they  mingled  in  inextrica- 
ble confusion.  The  sun  was  born  every  morning  as  a 
calf  or  as  a  child,  according  to  the  explanation  of  the 
heavens,  as  a  cow  or  a  woman,  and  he  sailed  across  the 
sky  in  a  celestial  barque,  to  arrive  in  the  west  and  de- 
scend as  an  old  man  tottering  into  the  grave.  Again 
the  lofty  flight  of  the  hawk,  which  seemed  a  very  com- 
rade of  the  sun,  led  them  to  believe  that  the  sun  himself 
must  be  such  a  hawk  takine:  his  daily  flight  across  the 


EARLY  RELIGION 


57 


heavens,  and  the  sun-disk,  wearing  the  outspread  wings 
of  the  hawk,  became  the  commonest  symbol  of  their 
reHgion. 

50.  The  earth,  or  as  they  knew  it,  their  elongated 
valley  was,  to  their  primitive  fancy,  a  man  lying  prone, 
upon  whose  back  the  vegetation  grew,  the  beasts  moved 
and  man  lived.  If  the  sky  was  a  sea  upon  which  the 
sun  and  the  heavenly  lights  sailed  westward  every  day, 
there  must  then  be  a  waterw^ay  by  which  they  could 
return;  so  there  was  beneath  the  earth  another  Nile, 
flowing  through  a  long  dark  passage  wdth  successive 
caverns,  through  which  the  celestial  barque  took  its 
way  at  night,  to  appear  again  in  the  east  at  early  morn- 
ing. This  subterranean  stream  was  connected  with  the 
Nile  at  the  first  cataract,  and  thence  issued  from  two 
caverns,  the  waters  of  their  life-giving  river.  It  will 
be  seen  that  for  the  people  among  whom  this  myth 
arose  the  world  ended  at  the  first  cataract;  all  that 
they  knew  beyond  was  a  vast  sea.  This  was  also  con- 
nected with  the  Nile  in  the  south,  and  the  river  returned 
to  it  in  the  north,  for  this  sea,  which  they  called  the 
"Great  Circle''  (BAR  II,  661),  surrounded*^ their  earth. 
It  is  the  idea  inherited  by  the  Greeks,  who  called  the 
sea  Okeanos,  or  Ocean.  In  the  beginning  only  this 
ocean  existed,  upon  which  there  had  then  appeared  an 
egg,  or  as  some  said  a  flower,  out  of  which  issued  the 
sun-god.  From  himself  he  begat  four  children,  Shu  and 
Tefnut,  Keb  and  Nut.  All  these,  with,  their  father, 
lay  upon  the  primeval  ocean,  when  Shu  and  Tefnut, 
who  represent  the  atmosphere,  thrust  themselves  be- 
tween Keb  and  Nut.  They  planted  their  feet  upon 
Keb  and  raised  Nut  on  high,  so  that  Keb  became  the 
earth  and  Nut  the  heavens.  Keb  and  Nut  were  the 
father  and  mother  of  the  four  divinities,  Osiris  and 


58 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


Isis,  Set  and  Nephthys;  together  they  formed  with 
their  primeval  father  the  sun-god,  Re  or  Atum,  a  circle 
of  nine  deities,  the  "ennead''  of  which  each  temple 
later  possessed  a  local  form.  This  correlation  of  the 
primitive  divinities  as  father,  mother  and  son,  strongly 
influenced  the  theology  of  later  times  until  each  temple 
possessed  an  artificially  created  triad,  of  purely  second- 
ary origin,  upon  which  an  "  ennead  was  then  built  up. 
Other  local  versions  of  this  story  of  the  world's  origin 
also  circulated.  One  of  them  represents  Re  as  ruling 
the  earth  for  a  time  as  king  over  men  (c/.,  p.  112)  who 
plotted  against  him,  so  that  he  sent  a  goddess,  Hathor, 
to  slay  them,  but  finally  repented  and  by  a  ruse  suc- 
ceeded in  diverting  the  goddess  from  the  total  exter- 
mination of  the  human  race,  after  she  had  destroyed 
them  in  part.  The  cow  of  the  sky  then  raised  Re  upon 
her  back  that  he  might  forsake  the  ungrateful  earth 
and  dwell  in  heaven. 

51.  Besides  these  gods  of  the  earth,  the  air  and  the 
heavens,  there  were  also  those  who  had  as  their  domain 
the  nether  world,  the  gloomy  passage,  along  which  the 
subterranean  stream  carried  the  sun  from  west  to  east. 
Here,  according  to  a  very  early  belief,  dwelt  the  dead, 
whose  king  was  Osiris.  He  had  succeeded  the  sun-god. 
Re,  as  king  on  earth,  aided  in  his  government  by  his 
faithful  sister-wife,  Isis.  A  benefactor  of  men,  and 
beloved  as  a  righteous  ruler,  he  was  nevertheless 
craftily  misled  and  slain  by  his  brother  Set.  When, 
after  great  tribulation,  Isis  had  gained  possession  of 
her  lord's  body,  she  was  assisted  in  preparing  it  for 
burial  by  one  of  the  old  gods  of  the  nether  world.  An- 
ubis,  the  jackal-god,  who  thereafter  became  the  god 
of  embalmment.  So  powerful  were  the  charms  now 
uttered  by  Isis  over  the  body  of  her  dead  husband  that 


EARLY  RELIGION 


59 


it  was  reanimated,  and  regained  the  use  of  its  limbs; 
and  although  it  was  impossible  for  the  departed  god 
to  resume  his  earthly  life,  he  passed  down  in  tri- 
umph as  a  living  king,  to  become  lord  of  the  nether 
world.  Isis  later  gave  birth  to  a  son,  Horus,  whom  she 
secretly  reared  among  the  marshy  fastnesses  of  the 
Delta  as  the  avenger  of  his  father.  Gro^^m  to  man- 
hood, the  youth  pursued  Set,  and  in  the  ensuing  awful 
battle,  which  raged  from  end  to  end  of  the  land,  both 
w^ere  fearfully  mutilated.  But  Set  was  defeated,  and 
Horus  triumphantly  assumed  the  earthly  throne  of  his 
father.  Thereupon  Set  entered  the  tribunal  of  the  gods, 
and  charged  that  the  birth  of  Horus  was  not  without 
stain,  and  that  his  claim  to  the  throne  was  not  valid. 
Defended  by  Thoth,  the  god  of  letters,  Horus  was 
vindicated  and  declared  "true  in  speech,"  or  ''tri- 
umphant." According  to  another  version  it  was  Osiris 
himself  who  was  thus  vindicated. 

52.  Not  all  the  gods  who  appear  in  these  tales  and 
fancies  became  more  than  mythological  figures.  INIany 
of  them  continued  merely  in  this  role,  without  temple  or 
form  of  worship;  they  had  but  a  folk-lore  or  finally  a 
theological  existence.  Others  became  the  great  gods 
of  Eg}^pt.  In  a  land  where  a  clear  sky  prevailed  and 
rain  was  rarely  seen  the  incessant  splendour  of  the  sun 
was  an  insistent  fact,  which  gave  him  the  highest  place 
in  the  thought  and  daily  life  of  the  people.  His  wor- 
ship was  almost  universal,  but  the  chief  centre  of  his 
cult  was  at  On,  the  Delta  city,  which  the  Greeks  called 
Heliopolis.  Here  he  was  known  as  Re,  which  was 
the  solar  orb  itself;  or  as  x\tum,  the  name  of  the  de- 
crepit sun,  as  an  old  man  tottering  down  the  west; 
again  his  name  Khepri,  written  with  a  beetle  in  hiero- 
glyphics, designated  him  in  the  youthful  vigour  of  his 


60 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


rising.  He  had  two  barques  with  which  he  sailed 
across  the  heavens,  one  for  the  morning  and  the  other 
for  the  afternoon,  and  when  in  this  barque  he  entered 
the  nether  world  at  evening  to  return  to  the  east  he 
brought  light  and  joy  to  its  disembodied  denizens. 
The  symbol  of  his  presence  in  the  temple  at  Heliopolis 
was  an  obelisk,  while  at  Edfu,  on  the  upper  river,  which 
was  also  an  old  centre  of  his  worship,  he  appeared  as  a 
hawk,  under  the  name  Horns. 

53.  The  Moon,  the  measurer  of  time,  furnished  the 
god  of  reckoning,  letters,  and  wisdom,  Thoth,  whose  chief 
centre  was  Shmun,  or  Hermopolis,  as  the  Greeks  who 
identified  him  with  Hermes,  called  the  place.  He  was 
identified  with  the  Ibis.  The  Sky,  whom  we  have  seen 
as  Nut,  was  worshipped  throughout  the  land,  although 
Nut  herself  continued  to  play  only  a  mythological  role. 
The  sky-goddess  became  the  type  of  woman  and  of 
woman's  love  and  joy.  At  the  ancient  shrine  of  Den- 
dereh  she  was  the  cow-goddess,  Hathor;  at  Sais  she 
was  the  joyous  Neit;  at  Bubastis,  in  the  form  of  a  cat, 
she  appeared  as  Bast;  while  at  Memphis  her  genial 
aspects  disappeared  and  she  became  a  lioness,  the 
goddess  of  storm  and  terror.  The  myth  of  Osiris,  so 
human  in  its  incidents  and  all  its  characteristics,  rapidly 
induced  the  wide  propagation  of  his  worship,  and  al- 
though Isis  still  remained  chiefly  a  figure  in  the  myth, 
she  became  the  type  of  wife  and  mother  upon  which 
the  people  loved  to  dwell.  Horus  also,  although  he 
really  belonged  originally  to  the  sun-myth  and  had 
nothing  to  do  with  Osiris,  was  for  the  people  the  em- 
bodiment of  the  qualities  of  a  good  son,  and  in  him 
they  constantly  saw  the  ulitmate  triumph  of  the  just 
cause.  The  immense  influence  of  the  Osiris-worship 
on  the  \ih      Egypt  we  shall  have  occasion  to  notice 


EARLY  RELIGION 


61 


further  in  discussing  mortuary  beliefs.  The  original 
home  of  Osiris  was  at  Dedu,  called  by  the  Greeks 
Busiris,  in  the  Delta;  but  Abydos,  in  Upper  Egypt, 
early  gained  a  reputation  of  peculiar  sanctity,  because 
the~head^  of  Osiris  was  buried  there.  He  always  ap- 
peared"  as  a  closely  swathed  figure,  enthroned  as  a 
Pharaoh  or  merely  a  curious  pillar,  a  fetish  surviving 
from  his  prehistoric  worship.  Into  the  circle  of  nature 
divinities  it  is  impossible  to  bring  Ptah  of  Memphis, 
who  was  one  of  the  early  and  great  gods  of  Egypt.  He 
was  the  patron  of  the  artisan,  the  artificer  and  artist, 
and  his  High  Priest  was  always  the  chief  artist  of  the 
court.  Such  were  the  chief  gods  of  Eg}"pt,  although 
many  another  important  deity  presided  in  this  or  that 
temple,  whom  it  would  be  impossible  for  us  to  notice 
here,  even  with  a  word. 

54.  The  external  manifestations  and  the  symbols 
with  which  the  Egyptian  clothed  these  gods  are  of  the 
simplest  character  and  they  show  the  primitive  sim- 
plicity of  the  age  in  which  these  deities  arose.  They 
bear  a  staff  like  a  Beduin  native  of  to-day,  or  the  god- 
desses wield  a  reed-stem;  their  diadems  are  of  woven 
reeds  or  a  pair  of  ostrich  feathers,  or  the  horns  of  a 
sheep.  In  such  an  age  the  people  frequently  saw  the 
manifestations  of  their  gods  in  the  numerous  animals 
with  which  they  were  surrounded,  and  the  veneratiom 
of  these  sacred  beasts  sur^'ived  into  an  age  of  high 
civilization,  when  we  should  have  expected  it  to  dis- 
appear. But  the  animal-worship,  which  we  usually 
associate  with  ancient  Eg\'pt,  as  a  cult  is  a  late  product, 
brought  forward  in  the  decline  of  the  nation  at  the 
close  of  its  history.  In  the  periods  with  which  we  shall 
have  to  deal,  it  was  unknown;  the  hawk,  for  example, 
was  the  sacred  animal  of  the  sun-god,  and  as  such  a 


62 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


living  hawk  might  have  a  place  in  the  temple,  where 
he  was  fed  and  kindly  treated,  as  any  such  pet  might 
be;  but  he  was  not  worshipped,  nor  was  he  the  object 
of  an  elaborate  ritual  as  later  (EHR,  25). 

55.  In  their  elongated  valley  the  local  beliefs  of  the 
earliest  Egyptians  could  not  but  differ  greatly  among 
themselves,  and  although,  for  example,  there  were  many 
centres  of  sun-worship,  each  city  possessing  a  sun- 
temple  regarded  the  sun  as  its  particular  god,  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  the  rest;  just  as  many  a  town  of  Italy 
at  the  present  day  would  not  for  a  moment  identify  its 
particular  Madonna  with  the  virgin  of  any  other  town. 
As  commercial  and  administrative  intercourse  was  in- 
creased by  political  union,  these  mutually  contradictory 
and  incompatible  beliefs  could  not  longer  remain  local. 
They  fused  into  a  complex  of  tangled  myth,  of  which 
we  have  already  offered  some  examples  and  shall  yet 
see  more.  Neither  did  the  theologizing  priesthoods 
ever  reduce  this  mass  of  belief  into  a  coherent  system; 
it  remained  as  accident  and  circumstance  brought  it 
together,  a  chaos  of  contradictions.  Another  result  of 
national  life  was  that,  as  soon  as  a  city  gained  political 
supremacy,  its  gods  rose  with  it  to  the  dominant  place 
among  the  innumerable  gods  of  the  land. 

56.  The  temples  in  which  the  earliest  Egyptian  wor- 
shipped we  have  already  had  occasion  to  notice.  He 
conceived  the  place  as  the  dwelling  of  his  god,  and 
hence  its  arrangement  probably  conformed  with  that 
of  a  private  house  of  the  predynastic  Egyptian.  While 
wattle  walls  have  given  place  to  stone  masonry,  it  was 
still  the  house  of  the  god.  Behind  a  forecourt  open  to 
the  sky  rose  a  colonnaded  hall,  beyond  which  was  a 
series  of  small  chambers  containing  the  furniture  and 
implements  for  the  temple  services.    Of  the  architect- 


EARLY  RELIGION 


63 


ure  and  decoration  of  the  building  we  shall  later  have 
occasion  to  speak  further.  The  centre  of  the  chambers 
in  the  rear  was  occupied  by  a  small  room,  the  holy  of 
holies,  in  which  stood  a  shrine  hewn  from  one  block 
of  granite.  It  contained  the  image  of  the  god,  a  small 
figure  of  wood  from  one  and  a  half  to  six  feet  high, 
elaborately  adorned  and  splendid  with  gold,  silver  and 
costly  stones.  The  service  of  the  divinity  who  dwelt 
here  consisted  simply  in  furnishing  him  with  those 
things  which  formed  the  necessities  and  luxuries  of  an 
Egyptian  of  wealth  and  rank  at  that  time:  plentiful 
food  and  drink,  fine  clothing,  music  and  the  dance. 
The  source  of  these  offerings  was  the  income  from  the 
endowment  of  lands  established  by  the  throne,  as  well 
as  various  contributions  from  the  royal  revenues  in 
grain,  wine,  oil,  honey  and  the  like  (BAR,  I,  153-167, 
213).  These  contributions  to  the  comfort  and  happi- 
ness of  the  lord  of  the  temple,  while  probably  originally 
offered  without  ceremony,  gradually  became  the  occa- 
sion of  an  elaborate  ritual  which  was  essentially  alike 
in  all  temples.  Outside  in  the  forecourt  was  the  great 
altar,  where  the  people  gathered  on  feast  days,  when 
they  were  permitted  to  share  the  generous  food  offerings, 
which  ordinarily  were  eaten  by  the  priests  and  servants 
of  the  temple,  after  they  had  been  presented  to  the  god. 
These  feasts,  besides  those  marking  times  and  seasons, 
were  frequently  commemorations  of  some  important 
event  in  the  story  or  myth  of  the  god,  and  on  such  occa- 
sions the  priests  in  procession  brought  forth  the  image 
in  a  portable  shrine,  having  the  form  of  a  small  Nile 
boat. 

57.  The  earliest  priesthood  was  but  an  incident  in 
the  duties  of  the  local  noblCj  who  was  the  head  of  the 
priests  in  the  community;  but  the  exalted  position  of 


64 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


the  Pharaoh,  as  the  nation  developed,  made  him  the 
sole  official  servant  of  the  gods,  and  there  arose  at  the 
beginning  of  the  nation's  history  a  state  form  of  re- 
ligion in  which  the  Pharaoh  played  the  supreme  role. 
In  theory,  therefore,  it  was  he  alone  who  worshipped 
the  gods;  in  fact,  however,  he  was  of  necessity  repre- 
sented in  each  of  the  many  temples  of  the  land  by  a 
high  priest,  by  whom  all  offerings  were  presented  "for 
the  sake  of  the  life,  prosperity  and  health"  of  the 
Pharaoh.  Some  of  these  high  priesthoods  were  of 
very  ancient  origin:  particularly  that  of  Heliopolis, 
whose  incumbent  was  called  "Great  Seer";  while  he 
of  Ptah  at  Memphis  was  called  "Great  Chief  of  Arti- 
ficers." Both  positions  demanded  two  incumbents  at 
once,  and  were  usually  held  by  men  of  high  rank.  The 
incumbents  of  the  other  high  priesthoods  of  later  origin 
all  bore  the  simple  title  of  "overseer  or  chief  of  priests." 
It  was  the  duty  of  this  man  not  merely  to  conduct  the 
service  and  ritual  of  the  sanctuary,  but  also  to  admin- 
ister its  endowment  of  lands,  from  the  income  of  which 
it  lived,  while  in  time  of  war  he  might  even  command 
the  temple  contingent.  He  was  assisted  by  a  body  of 
priests,  whose  sacerdotal  service  was,  with  few  excep- 
tions, merely  incidental  to  their  worldly  occupations. 
They  were  laymen,  w^ho  from  time  to  time  served  for 
a  stated  period  in  the  temple;  thus  in  spite  of  the 
fiction  of  the  Pharaoh  as  the  sole  worshipper  of  the 
god,  the  laymen  were  represented  in  its  service.  In 
the  same  w^ay  the  women  of  the  time  were  commonly 
priestesses  of  Neit  or  Hathor;  their  service  consisted 
in  nothing  more  than  dancing  and  jingling  a  sistrum 
before  the  god  on  festive  occasions.  The  state  fiction 
had  therefore  not  quite  suppressed  the  participation  of 
the  individual  in  the  service  of  the  temple.    In  har- 


EARLY  RELIGION 


65 


mony  with  the  conception  of  the  temple  as  the  god's 
dwelhng  the  most  frequent  title  of  the  priest  was 
"servant  of  the  god." 

58.  Parallel  with  this  development  of  a  state  religion 
with  its  elaborate  equipment,  the  evolution  of  the  pro- 
vision for  the  dead  had  kept  even  pace.  In  no  other 
land,  ancient  or  modern,  has  there  ever  been  such 
attention  to  the  equipment  of  the  dead  for  their  eternal 
sojourn  in  the  hereafter.  The  beliefs  which  finally  led 
the  Egyptian  to  the  devotion  of  so  much  of  his  wealth 
and  time,  his  skill  and  energy  to  the  erection  and 
equipment  of  the  "eternal  house"  are  the  oldest  con- 
ceptions of  a  real  life  hereafter  of  which  w^e  know.  He 
believed  that  the  body  was  animated  by  a  vital  force, 
which  he  pictured  as  a  counterpart  of  the  body,  which 
came  into  the  world  with  it,  passed  through  life  in  its 
company,  and  accompanied  it  into  the  next  world. 
This  he  called  a  "ka,"  and  it  is  often  spoken  of  in 
modern  treatises  as  a  "double,"  though  this  designa- 
tion describes  the  form  of  the  ka  as  represented  on  the 
monuments  rather  than  its  real  nature.  Besides  the 
ka  every  person  possessed  also  a  soul,  which  he  con- 
ceived in  the  form  of  a  bird  flitting  about  among  the 
trees;  though  it  might  assume  the  outward  semblance 
of  a  flower,  the  lotus,  a  serpent,  a  crocodile  sojourning 
in  the  river,  or  of  many  other  things.  Even  further 
elements  of  personality  seemed  to  them  present,  like 
the  shadow  possessed  by  every  one,  but  the  relations 
of  all  these  to  each  other  were  very  vague  and  confused 
in  the  mind  of  the  Egyptian;  just  as  the  average 
Christian  of  a  generation  ago,  who  accepted  the  doctrine 
of  body,  soul  and  spirit,  would  have  been  unable  to 
give  any  lucid  explanation  of  their  interrelations. 

59.  Like  the  varying  explanations  of  the  heavens  and 


66 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


the  world  there  were  many  once  probably  local  notions 
of  the  place  to  which  the  dead  journeyed;  but  these 
beliefs,  although  mutually  irreconcilable,  continued  to 
enjoy  general  acceptance,  and  no  one  was  troubled  by 
their  incompatibility,  even  if  it  ever  occurred  to  them. 
There  was  a  world  of  the  dead  in  the  west,  where  thg 
sun-god  descended  into  his  grave  every  night,  so  that 
"westerners"  was  for  the  Egyptian  a  term  for  the  de- 
parted; and  wherever  possible  the  cemeter}^  was  located 
on  the  margin  of  the  western  desert.  There  was  also 
the  nether  world  where  the  departed  lived  awaitino^  the 
return  of  the  solar  barque  every  evening,  that  they  might 
bathe  in  the  radiance  of  the  sun-god,  and,  seizing  the 
bow-rope  of  his  craft,  draw  him  with  rejoicing  through 
the  long  caverns  of  their  dark  abode.  In  the  splendour 
of  the  nightly  heavens  the  Nile-dweller  also  saw  the 
host  of  those  who  had  preceded  him;  thither  they  had 
flown  as  birds,  rising  above  all  foes  of  the  air,  and 
received  by  Re  as  the  companions  of  his  celestial  barque, 
they  now  swept  across  the  sky  as  eternal  stars.  Still 
more  commonly  the  Egyptian  told  of  a  field  in  the 
northeast  of  the  heavens,  which  he  called  the  ''field  of 
food,"  or  the  "field  of  Yarn,"  the  lentil  field,  where  the 
grain  grew  taller  than  any  ever  seen  on  the  banks  of 
the  Nile,  and  the  departed  dwelt  in  security  and  plenty. 
Besides  the  bounty  of  the  soil  he  received,  too,  from  the 
earthly  offerings  presented  in  the  temple  of  his  god: 
bread  and  beer  and  fine  linen.  It  was  not  ev£..y  one 
who  succeeded  in  reaching  this  field  of  the  blessed;  for 
it  was  surrounded  by  water.  Sometimes  the  departed 
might  'nduce  the  hawk  or  the  ibis  to  bear  him  across 
on  their  pinions ;  again  friendly  spirits,  the  four  sons  of 
Horus,  brought  him  a  craft  upon  which  he  might  float 
over;  sometimes  the  sun-god  bore  him  across   in  hi3 


EARLY  RELIGION 


67 


barque;  but  by  far  the  majority  depended  upon  the 
services  of  a  ferryman  called  "Turnface"  or  "Look- 
behind,"  because  his  face  was  ever  turned  to  the  rear 
in  poling  his  craft.  He  v^ill  not  receive  all  into  his 
boat,  but  only  him  of  whom  it  is  said,  "  there  is  no  evil 
which  he  has  done,"  or  "the  just  who  hath  no  boat," 
or  him  who  is  "righteous  before  heaven  and  earth  and 
before  the  isle"  (Pyramid  of  Pepi  I,  400;  Mernere  570, 
AZ,  XXXI,  76-77),  where  lies  the  happy  field  to  which 
they  go.  These  are  the  earliest  traces  in  the  history 
of  man  of  an  ethical  test  at  the  close  of  life,  making  the 
life  hereafter  dependent  upon  the  character  of  the  life 
lived  on  earth.  It  was  at  this  time,  however,  prevail- 
ingly ceremonial  rather  than  moral  purity  which  se- 
cured the  waiting  soul  passage  across  the  waters.  (But 
see  BAR,  I,  252,  279.) 

60.  Into  these  early  beliefs,  with  which  Osiris  origi- 
nally had  nothing  to  do,  the  myth  which  told  of  his  death 
and  departure  mto  the  nether  world,  now  entered  to 
become  the  dominating  element  in  Egyptian  mortuary 
belief.  He  had  become  the  "first  of  those  in  the  west" 
and  "king  of  the  glorified";  every  soul  that  suffered 
the  fate  of  Osiris  might  also  experience  his  restoration 
to  life;  might  indeed  become  an  Osiris.  Believing  thus 
that  all  might  share  the  goodly  destiny  of  Osiris,  they 
contemplated  death  without  dismay,  for  they  said  of 
the  dead,  "They  depart  not  as  those  who  are  dead, 
but  they  depart  as  those  who  are  living"  (EHR,  96-99). 
Here  there  entered,  as  a  salutary  influence,  also  the  in- 
cident of  the  triumphant  vindication  of  Osiris  when 
accused;  for  there  is  a  hint  of  a  similar  moral  justifica- 
tion for  all,  which,  as  an  ethical  influence,  we  shall  yet 
see,  was  the  most  fruitful  germ  in  Egyptian  religion 
(BAR,  I,  331,  253,  330,  338,  357). 


68 


rHE  OLD  KINGDOM 


61.  These  views  are  chiefly  found  in  the  oldest  mor- 
tuary  literature  of  Egypt  which  we  possess,  a  series  of 
texts  supposed  to  be  effective  in  securing  for  the  de- 
ceased the  enjoyment  of  a  happy  life,  and  especially  the 
blessed  future  enjoyed  by  Osiris.  They  were  engraved 
upon  the  passages  of  the  Fifth  and  SLxth  Dynast} 
pyramids,  where  they  have  been  preserved  in  large 
numbers,  and  it  is  largely  from  them  that  the  above 
sketch  of  the  early  Egyptian's  notions  of  the  hereafter 
has  been  taken  (see  EHR).  From  the  place  in  which 
they  are  found  they  are  usually  called  the  "Pyramid 
Texts."  Many  of  these  texts  grew  up  in  the  pre- 
dynastic  age  and  some  have  therefore  been  altered  to 
accommodate  them  to  the  Osiris  faith,  with  which  they 
originally  had  no  connection — a  process  which  has  of 
course  resulted  in  inextricable  confusion  of  originally 
differing  mortuary  beliefs. 

62.  So  insistent  a  belief  or  set  of  beliefs  in  a  life 
beyond  the  grave  necessarily  brought  with  it  a  mass  of 
mortuary  usages  with  which  in  the  earliest  period  of 
Egypt's  career  we  have  already  gained  some  acquaint- 
ance. It  is  evident  that  however  persistently  the 
Egyptian  transferred  the  life  of  the  departed  to  some 
distant  region,  far  from  the  tomb  where  the  body  lay, 
he  was  never  able  to  detach  the  future  life  entirely  from 
the  body.  It  is  evident  that  he  could  conceive  of  no 
survival  of  the  dead  without  it.  Gradually  he  had 
developed  a  more  and  more  pretentious  and  a  safer 
repository  for  his  dead,  until,  as  we  have  seen,  it  had 
become  a  vast  and  massive  structure  of  stone.  In  all 
the  world  no  such  colossal  tombs  as  the  pyramids  are 
to  be  found;  while  the  tombs  of  the  nobles  grouped 
about  have  in  the  Old  Kingdom  become  immense 
masonry  structures,  which,  but  a  few  centuries  before. 


EARLY  RELIGION 


69 


a  king  would  have  been  proud  to  own.  Such  a  tomb 
as  that  of  Pepi  I's  vizier  in  'he  Sixth  Dynasty  contained 
no  less  than  thirty-one  rooms.  The  superstructure  of 
such  a  tomb  was  a  massive,  flat-topped,  rectangular 
oblong  of  masonry,  the  sides  of  which  slanted  inward 
at  an  angle  of,  roughly,  seventy-five  degrees.  It  was, 
with  the  exception  of  its  room  or  rooms,  solid  through- 
out, reminding  the  modern  natives  of  the  ''mastaba,'* 
the  terrace,  area  or  bench  on  which  they  squat  before 
their  houses  and  shops.  Such  a  tomb  is  therefore 
commonly  termed  a  "mastaba.^'  The  simplest  of  such 
mastabas  has  no  rooms  within,  and  only  a  false  door 
in  the  east  side,  by  which  the  dead,  dwelling  in  the 
west,  that  is,  behind  this  door,  might  enter  again  the 
world  of  the  living.  This  false  door  was  finally  elab- 
orated into  a  kind  of  chapel-chamber  in  the  mass  of 
the  masonry,  the  false  door  now  being  placed  in  the 
west  wall  of  the  chamber.  The  inner  walls  of  this 
chapel  bore  scenes  carved  in  relief,  depicting  the  ser- 
vants and  slaves  of  the  deceased  at  their  daily  tasks  on 
his  estate,  in  field  and  workshop,  producing  all  those 
things  which  were  necessary  for  their  lord's  welfare  in 
the  hereafter,  while  here  and  there  his  towering  figure 
appeared  superintending  and  inspecting  their  labours 
as  he  had  done  before  he  departed  into  the  ^Yest."  It 
is  these  scenes  which  are  the  source  of  our  knowledge 
of  the  life  and  customs  of  the  time.  Far  below  the 
massive  mastaba  was  a  burial  chamber  in  the  native 
rock  reached  by  a  shaft  which  passed  down  through 
the  superstructure  of  masonry.  On  the  day  of  burial 
the  body,  now  duly  embalmed,  was  subjected  to  elab- 
orate ceremonies  re-enacting  occurrences  in  the  resur- 
rection of  Osiris.  It  was  especially  necessary  by  potent 
charms  to  open  the  mouth  and  ears  of  the  deceaseci 


70 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


that  he  might  speak  and  hear  in  the  hereafter.  The 
mummy  was  then  lowered  down  the  shaft  and  laid  upon 
its  left  side  in  a  fine  rectangular  cedar  coffin,  which 
again  was  deposited  in  a  massive  sarcophagus  of  granite 
or  limestone.  Food  and  drink  were  left  with  it,  be- 
sides some  few  toilet  articles,  a  magic  wand  and  a  num- 
ber of  amulets  for  protection  against  the  enemies  of  the 
dead,  especially  serpents.  The  number  of  serpent- 
charms  in  the  Pyramid  Texts,  intended  to  render  these 
foes  harmless,  is  very  large.  The  deep  shaft  leading 
to  the  burial  chamber  was  then  filled  to  the  top  with 
sand  and  gravel,  and  the  friends  of  the  dead  now  left 
him  to  the  life  in  the  hereafter,  which  we  have  pictured. 

63.  Yet  their  duty  toward  their  departed  friend  had 
not  yet  lapsed.  In  a  tiny  chamber  beside  the  chapel 
they  masoned  up  a  portrait  statue  of  the  deceased, 
sometimes  cutting  small  channels,  which  connected  the 
two  rooms,  the  chapel  and  the  statue-chamber,  or 
"serdab,"  as  the  modern  natives  call  it.  As  the  statue 
was  an  exact  reproduction  of  the  deceased's  body,  his 
ka  might  therefore  attach  itself  to  this  counterfeit,  and 
through  the  connecting  channels  enjoy  the  food  and 
drink  placed  for  it  in  the  chapel.  The  offerings  to  the 
dead,  originally  only  a  small  loaf  in  a  bowl,  placed  by 
a  son,  or  wife,  or  brother  on  a  reed  mat  at  the  gravs, 
have  now  become  as  elaborate  as  the  daily  cuisine  once 
enjoyed  by  the  lord  of  the  tomb  before  he  forsook  his 
earthly  house.  But  this  labour  of  love,  or  sometimes 
of  fear,  has  now  devolved  upon  a  large  ^personnel,  at- 
tached to  the  tomb,  some  of  whom,  as  its  priests,  con- 
stantly maintained  its  ritual.  Very  specific  contracts 
were  made  with  these  persons,  requiting  them  for  their 
services  with  a  fixed  income  drawn  from  endowments 
legally  established  and  recorded  for  this  purpose  by 


EARLY  RELIGION 


71 


the  noble  himself,  in  anticipation  of  his  death.  The 
tomb  of  Prince  Nekure,  son  of  King  Khafre  of  the 
Fourth  Dynasty,  was  endowed  with  the  revenues  from 
twelve  towns,  and  as  many  as  eight  priests  of  such  a 
tomb  were  required  for  its  service  (BiVR,  I,  200-209, 
231-235,  191,  226-227,  379;  EHR,  123). 

Such  endowments  and  the  service  thus  maintained 
were  intended  to  be  permanent,  but  in  the  course  of  a 
few  generations  the  accumulated  burden  was  intolera- 
ble, and  ancestors  of  a  century  before,  with  rare  excep- 
tions', were  necessarily  neglected  or  transferred  in  order 
to  maintain  those  whose  claims  were  stronger  and 
more  recent  (BAR.  I,  173,  1.  5;  241).  It  had  now 
become  so  customary  for  the  king  to  assist  his  favourite 
lords  and  nobles  in  this  way  that  we  find  a  frequent 
mortuary  prayer  beginning  ''An  offering  which  the  king 
gives,"  and  as  long  as  the  number  of  those  whose  tombs 
were  thus  maintained  was  limited  to  the  noble  and 
oflScial  circle  around  the  king,  such  royal  largesses 
to  the  dead  were  quite  possible.  But  in  later  times, 
when  the  mortuary  practices  of  the  noble  class  had 
spread  to  the  masses,  they  also  employed  the  same 
prayer,  although  it  is  impossible  that  the  royal  bounty 
could  have  been  so  extended.  Thus  this  prayer  is  to- 
day the  most  frequent  formula  to  be  found  on  the 
Egyptian  monuments,  occurring  thousands  of  times  on 
the  tombs  or  tombstones  of  people  who  had  no  prospect 
of  enjoying  such  royal  distinction;  and  in  the  same 
tomb  it  is  always  repeated  over  and  over  again.  In 
the  same  way  the  king  also  assisted  his  favourites  in 
the  erection  of  their  tombs,  and  the  noble  often  records 
the  fact  with  pride  (BAR,  I,  204,  207,  213-227,  242- 
249,  370,  210-212,  237-240,  274-277,  308). 

64.  If  the  tomb  of  the  noble  had  now  become  an 


72 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


endowed  institution,  we  have  seen  that  that  of  the  kin^ 
was  already  such  in  the  First  Dynasty.  In  the  Third 
Dynasty,  at  least,  the  Pharaoh  was  not  satisfied  with 
one  tomb,  but  in  his  double  capacity  as  king  of  the 
Two  Lands  he  erected  two,  just  as  the  palace  was 
double  for  the  same  reason.  We  find  the  monarch's 
tomb  now  far  surpassing  that  of  the  noble  in  its  extent 
and  magnificence.  The  mortuary  service  of  the  Pha- 
raoh's lords  might  be  conducted  in  the  chapel  in  the 
east  side  of  the  mastaba;  but  that  of  the  Pharaoh 
himself  now  required  a  separate  building,  a  splendid 
mortuary  temple  on  the  east  side  of  the  pyramid.  A 
richly  endowed  priesthood  was  here  employed  to  main- 
tain its  ritual  and  to  furnish  the  food,  drink  and  clothing 
of  the  departed  king.  Its  large  personnel  demanded 
many  outbuildings,  and  the  whole  group  of  pyramid, 
temple  and  accessories  was  surrounded  by  a  wall.  All 
this  was  on  the  edge  of  the  plateau  overlooking  the 
valley,  in  which,  below  the  pyramid,  there  now  grew 
up  a  walled  town.  Leading  up  from  the  town  to  the 
pyramid  enclosure  was  a  massive  causeway  of  stone 
which  terminated  at  the  lower  or  townward  end  in  a 
large  and  stately  structure  of  granite  or  limestone,  some- 
times with  floors  of  alabaster,  the  whole  forming  a 
superb  portal,  a  worthy  entrance  to  so  impressive  a 
tomb.  Through  this  portal  passed  the  white-robed 
procession  on  feast  days,  moving  from  the  town  up  the 
long  white  causeway  to  the  temple,  above  which  rose 
the  mighty  mass  of  the  pyramid.  The  populace  in  the 
city  below  probably  never  gained  access  to  the  pyramid 
enclosure.  Over  the  town  wall,  through  the  waving 
green  of  the  palms,  they  saw  the  gleaming  white 
pyramid,  where  lay  the  god  who  had  once  ruled  over 
them;  while  beside  it  rose  slowly  year  by  year  another 


EARLY  RELIGION 


73 


mountain  of  stone,  gradually  assuming  pyramid  form, 
and  there  would  some  time  rest  his  divine  son,  of  whose 
splendour  they  had  now  and  then  on  feast  days  caught 
a  fleeting  glimpse.  WTiile  the  proper  burial  of  the 
Pharaoh  and  his  nobles  had  now  become  a  matter 
seriously  affecting  the  economic  conditions  of  the  state, 
such  elaborate  mortuary  equipment  was  still  confined 
to  a  small  class,  and  the  common  people  continued  to 
lay  away  their  dead  without  any  attempt  at  embalm- 
ment in  the  pit  of  their  prehistoric  ancestors  on  the 
margin  of  the  western  desert. 


V 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM:  GOVERNMENT  AND  SOCIETY, 
INDUSTRY  AND  ART 

65.  At  the  dawn  of  the  Old  Kingdom  the  kingship 
had  attained  a  prestige  and  an  exalted  power,  demand- 
ing the  deepest  reverence  of  the  subject  whether  high 
or  low.  Indeed  the  king  was  now  officially  a  god,  and 
one  of  the  most  frequent  titles  was  the  ''Good  God"; 
such  was  the  respect  due  him  that  there  was  reluctance 
to  refer  to  him  by  name.  The  courtier  might  designate 
him  impersonally  as  ''one,"  and  "to  let  one  know" 
becomes  the  official  phrase  for  "report  to  the  king." 
His  government  and  ultimately  the  monarch  personally 
were  called  the  "Great  House,"  in  Egyptian  Per-o,  a 
term  which  has  descended  to  us  through  the  Hebrews 
as  "Pharaoh."  ^^^len  he  died  he  was  received  into 
the  circle  of  the  gods,  to  be  worshipped  like  them  ever 
after  in  the  temple  before  the  vast  pyramid  in  which 
he  slept. 

66.  Court  customs  had  gradually  deve^v^ped  into  an 
elaborate  oflficial  etiquette,  for  the  punctilious  observ- 
ance of  which,  already  in  this  distant  age,  a  host  of 
gorgeous  marshals  and  court  chamberlains  were  in 
constant  attendance  at  the  palace.  There  had  thus 
grown  up  a  palace  life,  not  unlike  that  of  modern  times 
in  the  East,  a  life  into  which  we  gain  obscure  glimpses 
in  ih.}  numerous  titles  which  the  court  lords  of  the  time, 

74 


GOVERNMENT  AND  SOCIETY 


75 


with  ostentatious  pride,  have  displayed  on  the  walls  of 
their  tombs.  Every  need  of  the  royal  person  was  repre- 
sented by  some  palace  lord,  whose  duty  it  was  to  supply 
it.  There  were  many  ranks,  and  the  privileges  of  each, 
with  all  possible  niceties  of  precedence,  were  strictly 
obsen^ed  and  enforced  by  the  court  marshals  at  all 
state  levees  and  royal  audiences.  The  king's  favourite 
wife  became  the  oflBcial  queen,  whose  eldest  son  usu- 
ally received  the  appointment  as  crown  prince  to  suc- 
ceed his  father.  But  as  at  all  Oriental  courts,  there 
was  also  a  royal  harem  with  numerous  inmates.  Many 
sons  usually  surrounded  the  monarch,  and  the  vast 
revenues  of  the  palace  were  liberally  distributed  among 
them.  A  son  of  King  Khafre  in  the  Fourth  D}Tiasty 
left  an  estate  of  fourteen  towns,  besides  a  to^vn  house 
and  two  estates  at  the  royal  residence,  the  pyramid 
city.  Besides  these,  the  endowment  of  his  tomb  com- 
prised twelve  to^ns  more  (BAR,  I,  190-199).  But 
these  princes  assisted  in  their  father's  government,  and 
did  not  live  a  life  of  indolence  and  luxury.  We  shall 
find  them  occupying  some  of  the  most  arduous  posts  in 
the  ser\^ice  of  the  state. 

67.  However  exalted  may  have  been  the  official  posi- 
tion of  the  Pharaoh  as  the  sublime  god  at  the  head  of 
the  state,  he  nevertheless  maintained  close  personal 
relations  with  the  more  prominent  nobles  of  the  realm. 
As  a  prince  he  had  been  educated  with  a  group  of 
youths  from  the  families  of  these  nobles,  and  together 
they  had  been  instructed  in  such  manly  art  as  swim- 
ming. The  friendships  and  the  intimacies  thus  formed 
in  youth  must  have  been  a  powerful  influence  in  the 
later  life  of  the  monarch.  We  see  the  Pharaoh  giving 
his  daughter  in  marriage  to  one  of  these  youths  with 
whom  he  had  been  educated,  and  the  severe  decorum 


76 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


of  the  court  was  violated  in  behalf  of  this  favourite, 
who  was  not  permitted  on  formal  occasions  to  kiss  the 
dust  before  the  Pharaoh,  but  enjoyed  the  unprecedented 
privilege  of  kissing  the  royal  foot.  On  the  part  of  his 
intimates  such  ceremonial  was  purely  a  matter  of 
official  etiquette;  in  private  the  monarch  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  recline  familiarly  in  complete  relaxation  beside 
one  of  his  favourites,  while  the  attending  slaves  anointed 
them  both.  The  daughter  of  such  a  noble  might  be- 
come the  official  queen  and  mother  of  the  next  king. 
We  see  the  king  displaying  the  greatest  solicitude  and 
sorrow  at  the  sudden  sickness  and  death  of  his  vizier. 
It  is  evident  that  the  most  powerful  lords  of  the  king- 
dom were  thus  bound  to  the  person  of  the  Pharaoh  by 
close  personal  ties  of  blood  and  friendship.  These  re- 
lations were  carefully  fostered  by  the  monarch,  and  in 
the  Fourth  and  early  Fifth  Dynasty  there  are  aspects 
of  this  ancient  state  in  which  its  inner  circle  at  least 
reminds  one  of  a  great  family,  so  that,  as  we  have  ob- 
served, the  king  assisted  all  its  members  in  the  building 
and  equipment  of  their  tombs,  and  showed  the  greatest 
solicitude  for  their  welfare,  both  here  and  in  the  here- 
after (BAR,  I,  256;  254  ff.)  260,  270,  344,  242-249). 

68.  At  the  head  of  government  there  was  theoretically 
none  to  question  the  Pharaoh's  power.  In  actual  fact 
he  was  as  subject  to  the  demands  of  policy  toward  this 
or  that  class,  powerful  family,  clique  or  individual,  or 
toward  the  harem,  as  are  his  successors  in  the  Oriental 
despotisms  of  the  present  day.  These  forces,  which 
more  or  less  modified  his  daily  acts,  we  can  follow  at 
this  distant  day  only  as  we  see  the  state  slowly  moulded 
in  its  larger  outlines  by  the  impact  of  generation  after 
generation  of  such  influences  from  the  Pharaoh's  en- 
vironment.   In  spite  of  the  luxury  evident  in  the  organ- 


GOVERNMENT  AND  SOCIETY 


77 


ization  of  his  court,  the  Pharaoh  did  not  Hve  the  hfe 
of  a  luxurious  despot,  such  as  we  frequently  find  among 
the  Mamelukes  of  ^Moslem  Egypt.  In  the  Fourth 
Dynasty,  at  least,  he  had  as  prince  already  seen  arduous 
service  in  the  superintendence  of  quarrying  and  mining 
operations,  or  he  had  served  his  father  as  vizier  or 
prime  minister,  gaining  invaluable  experience  in  gov- 
ernment before  his  succession  to  the  throne.  He  was 
thus  an  educated  and  enlightened  monarch,  able  to 
read  and  write,  and  not  infrequently  taking  his  pen  in 
hand  personally  to  indite  a  letter  of  thanks  and  appre- 
ciation to  some  deserving  officer  in  his  government 
(BAR,  I,  268-270,  271).  He  constantly  received  his 
ministers  and  engineers  to  discuss  the  needs  of  the 
country,  especially  in  the  conservation  of  the  water 
supply  and  the  development  of  the  system  of  irrigation. 
He  read  many  a  weary  roll  of  state  papers,  or  turned 
from  these  to  dictate  dispatches  to  his  commanders  in 
Sinai,  Nubia  and  Punt,  along  the  southern  Red  Sea. 
The  briefs  of  litigating  heirs  reached  his  hands  and  were 
probably  not  always  a  matter  of  mere  routine  to  be 
read  by  secretaries.  When  such  business  of  the  royal 
offices  had  been  settled  the  monarch  rode  out  in  his 
palanquin,  accompanied  by  his  vizier  and  attendants, 
to  inspect  his  buildings  and  public  works,  and  his  hand 
w^as  everywhere  felt  in  all  the  important  affairs  of  the 
nation. 

69.  The  situation  of  the  royal  residence  was  largely 
determined  by  the  pyramid  which  the  king  was  build- 
ing. As  we  have  remarked,  the  palace  and  the  town 
formed  by  the  court  and  all  that  was  attached  to  it 
probably  lay  in  the  valley  below  the  margin  of  the 
western  desert  plateau  on  which  the  pyramid  rose. 
From  dynasty  to  dynasty,  or  sometimes  from  reign  to 


78 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


reign,  it  followed  the  pyramid,  the  light  construction 
of  the  palaces  and  villas  not  interfering  seriously  with 
such  mobility.  After  the  Third  Dynasty  the  residence 
was  always  in  the  vicinity  of  later  Memphis.  The 
palace  itself  was  double,  or  at  least  it  possessed  two 
gates  in  its  front,  named  after,  and  corresponding  to 
the  two  ancient  kingdoms,  of  which  it  was  now  the  seat 
of  government  (BAR,  I,  148).  Throughout  Egyptian 
history  the  fa9ade  of  the  palace  was  therefore  called  the 
"double  front,"  and  in  writing  the  word  "palace"  the 
scribe  frequently  placed  the  sign  of  two  houses  after  it. 
The  royal  office  and  the  sub-departments  of  govern- 
ment were  also  termed  "double;'*  but  these  titles 
doubtless  no  longer  corresponded  to  existing  double 
organizations;  they  have  become  a  persistent  fiction 
surviving  from  the  first  two  dynasties.  Adjoining  the 
palace  was  a  huge  court,  connected  with  which  were 
the  "halls"  or  offices  of  the  central  government.  The 
entire  complex  of  palace  and  adjoining  offices  was 
known  as  the  "  Great  House,"  which  was  thus  the 
centre  of  administration  as  well  as  the  dwelling  of  the 
royal  household.  Here  was  focussed  the  entire  system 
of  government,  which  ramified  throughout  the  country. 

70.  For  purposes  of  local  government  Upper  Egypt 
was  divided  into  some  twenty  administrative  districts, 
and  later  we  find  as  many  more  in  the  Delta.  These 
"nomes"  were  presumably  the  early  principalities  from 
which  the  local  princes  who  ruled  them  in  prehistoric 
days  had  long  disappeared.  At  the  head  of  such  a 
district  or  no  me  there  was  in  the  Fourth  and  Fifth 
Dynasties  an  official  appointed  by  the  crown,  and  known 
as  "First  under  the  King."  Besides  his  administrative 
function  as  "local  governor"  of  the  nome,  he  also  served 
in  a  judicial  capacity,  and  therefore  bore  also  the  title 


GOVERNMENT  AND  SOCIETY 


79 


of  "judge."  In  Upper  Egypt  these  "local  governors" 
were  also  sometimes  styled  "Magnates  of  the  Southern 
Ten/'  as  if  there  were  a  group  among  them  enjoying 
higher  rank  and  forming  a  college  or  council  of  ten. 
While  we  are  not  so  well  informed  regarding  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  North,  the  system  there  was  evidently 
very  similar,  although  there  were  perhaps  fewer  local 
governors.  Within  the  nome  which  he  administered 
the  "local  governor"  had  under  his  control  a  miniature 
state,  an  administrative  unit  with  all  the  organs  of 
government:  a  treasur}^,  a  court  of  justice,  a  land- 
office,  a  sen'ice  for  the  cons^rv^ation  of  the  dykes  and 
canals,  a  body  of  militia,  a  magazine  for  their  equip- 
ment; and  in  these  offices  a  host  of  scribes  and  record- 
ers, with  an  ever  growing  mass  of  archives  and  local 
records.  The  chief  administrative  bond  which  co- 
ordinated and  centralized  these  nomes  was  the  organ- 
ization of  the  treasury,  by  the  operation  of  which  there 
annually  converged  upon  the  magazines  of  the  central 
government  the  grain,  cattle,  poultry  and  industrial 
products,  which  in  an  age  without  coinage,  were  col- 
lected as  taxes  by  the  local  governors.  The  local 
registration  of  land,  or  the  land-office,  the  irrigation 
service,  the  judicial  administration,  and  other  adminis- 
trative functions  were  also  centralized  at  the  Great 
House;  but  it  was  the  treasury  which  formed  the  most 
tangible  bond  between  the  palace  and  the  nomes. 
Over  the  entire  fiscal  administration  there  was  a  "  Chief 
Treasurer,"  residing  of  course  at  the  court,  assisted  by 
two  "treasurers  of  the  god"  (i.  e.,  of  the  king),  having 
charge  of  resources  from  mines  and  quarries  for  the 
great  public  works. 

71.  As  the  reader  may  have  already  inferred,  the 
judicial  functions  of  the  local  governors  were  merely 


80 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


incidental  to  their  administrative  labours.  There  was 
therefore  no  clearly  defined  class  of  professional  judges, 
but  the  administrative  oflBcials  were  learned  in  the  law 
and  assumed  judicial  duties.  Like  the  treasury,  the 
judicial  administration  also  converged  in  one  person, 
foi  the  local  judges  were  organized  into  six  courts  and 
these  in  turn  were  under  a  chief  justice  of  the  whole 
realm.  Many  of  the  judges  bore  the  additional  pred- 
icate "attached  to  Nekhen"  (Hieraconpolis),  an  an- 
cient title  descended  from  the  days  when  Nekhen  was 
the  royal  residence  of  the  Southern  Kingdom.  There 
was  a  body  of  highly  elaborated  law,  which  has  un- 
fortunately perished  entirely.  The  local  governors 
boast  of  their  fairness  and  justice  in  deciding  cases, 
often  stating  in  their  tombs:  "Never  did  I  judge  two 
brothers  in  such  a  way  that  a  son  was  deprived  of  his 
paternal  possession"  (BAR,  I,  331,  357).  Even  a  royal 
intrigante  conspiring  in  the  harem  is  not  summarily  put 
to  death,  but  is  given  legal  trial  (BAR,  I,  307,  310). 
The  system  of  submitting  all  cases  to  the  court  in  the 
form  of  written  briefs,  a  method  so  praised  by  Diodorus 
(I,  75  /.),  seems  to  have  existed  already  in  this  remote 
age,  and  the  Berlin  Museum  possesses  such  a  legal 
document  pertaining  to  litigation  between  an  heir  and 
an  executor.  It  is  the  oldest  legal  document  in  exist- 
ence and  contains  an  appeal  tg  the  king,  which,  under 
circumstances  not  yet  clear  to  U5,  wa^  pcbssible  (PKM, 

72.  The  immediate  head  of  the  entire  organization  of 
government  was  the  Pharaoh's  prime  minister,  or  as 
he  is  more  commonly  called  in  the  East,  the  vizier.  At 
the  same  time  he  also  regularly  served  as  chief  justice; 
he  was  thus  the  most  powerful  man  in  the  kingdom, 
next  to  the  monarch  himself,  and  for  that  reason  the 


GOVERNMENT  AND  SOCIETY 


81 


oflSce  was  held  by  the  crown  prince  in  the  Fourth 
Dynasty.  His  ''hall"  or  office  served  as  the  archives  of 
the  government,  and  he  was  the  chief  archivist  of  the 
state.  The  state  records  were  called  ''king's  writings.'' 
Here  all  lands  were  registered,  and  all  local  archives 
centralized  and  coordinated;  here  wills  were  recorded, 
and  when  executed  the  resulting  new  titles  were  issued. 
Over  the  vast  army  of  scribes  and  officials  who  trans- 
acted the  business  of  the  Great  House  the  vizier  was 
supreme.  When  we  add,  that  besides  some  minor 
offices,  he  was  also  often  the  Pharaoh's  chief  architect, 
or  as  the  Egyptian  said,  "Chief  of  all  Works  of  the 
King,"  we  shall  understand  that  this  great  minister 
was  the  busiest  man  in  the  kingdom.  All  powerful  as 
he  was,  whose  name  might  be  followed  by  the  royal 
salutation,  "Life,  Prosperity,  Health,"  the  people  ap- 
pealed to  him  in  his  judicial  capacity  as  to  one  who 
could  right  every  wrong,  and  the  office  was  traditionally 
the  most  popular  in  the  long  list  of  the  Pharaoh's  ser- 
vants. The  greatest  sages  and  authors  of  proverbial 
wisdom  famous  in  later  days,  like  Imhotep,  Kegemne 
and  Ptah-hotep,  had  been  viziers  in  the  Old  Kingdom 
(BAR,  I,  268  273;  175  11.  14-16;  190-199;  213-217, 
231  ff.)  173). 

73.  Such  was  the  organization  of  this  remarkable 
state,  as  we  are  able  to  discern  it  during  the  first  two 
or  three  centuries  of  the  Old  Kingdom.  In  the  thirtieth 
century  before  Christ  it  had  reached  an  elaborate  devel- 
opment of  state  functions  under  local  officials,  such  as 
was  not  found  in  Europe  until  far  down  in  the  history 
of  the  Roman  Empire.  It  was,  to  sum  up  briefly,  a 
closely  centralized  organization  of  local  official  bodies, 
each  a  centre  for  all  the  organs  of  the  local  government, 
which  in  each  nome  were  focussed  in  the  local  governor 


82 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


before  converging  upon  the  palace.  It  was  the  main- 
tenance of  the  nomes  each  as  a  separate  unit  of  govern- 
ment, and  the  interposition  of  the  governor  at  its  head 
between  the  Pharaoh  and  the  nome,  which  rendered 
the  system  dangerous.  These  little  states  within  the 
state  might  too  easily  become  independent  centres  of 
political  power.  How  this  process  actually  took  place 
we  shall  be  able  to  observe  as  we  follow  the  career  of 
the  Old  Kingdom  in  the  next  chapter. 

74.  Such  a  process  was  rendered  the  more  easy  be- 
cause the  government  did  not  maintain  any  uniform  or 
compact  military  organization.  Each  nome  possessed 
its  militia,  commanded  by  the  civil  officials,  who  were 
not  necessarily  trained  soldiers;  there  was  thus  no 
class  of  exclusively  military  officers.  The  temple  es- 
tates likewise  maintained  a  body  of  such  troops.  They 
were  for  the  most  part  employed  in  mining  and  quarry- 
ing expeditions,  supplying  the  hosts  necessary  for  the 
transportation  of  the  enormous  blocks  often  demanded 
by  the  architects.  In  such  work  they  were  under  the 
command  of  the  treasurer  of  the  god."  In  case  of 
serious  war,  as  there  was  no  standing  army,  this  militia 
from  all  the  nomes  and  temple  estates,  besides  auxil- 
iaries levied  among  the  Nubian  tribes,  were  brought 
together  as  quickly  as  possible,  and  the  command  of  the 
motley  host,  without  any  permanent  organization,  was 
entrusted  by  the  monarch  to  some  able  official.  As 
the  local  governors  commanded  the  militia  of  the  nomes, 
they  held  the  sources  of  the  Pharaoh's  dubious  military 
strength  in  their  own  hands. 

75.  The  land  which  was  thus  administered  must  to 
a  large  extent  have  belonged  to  the  crown.  Under  the 
oversight  of  the  local  governors'  subordinates  it  was 
worked  and  made  profitable  bv  slaves  or  serfs,  who 


GOVERNMENT  AND  SOCIETY 


83 


formed  the  bulk  of  the  population.  They  belonged  to 
the  ground  and  were  bequeathed  with  it  (BAR,  I,  171). 
We  have  no  means  of  determining  how  large  this  popula- 
tion was,  although,  as  we  have  before  stated,  it  had 
reached  the  sum  of  seven  million  by  Roman  times. 
The  descendants  of  the  numerous  progeny  of  older 
kings,  with  possible  remnants  of  the  prehistoric  landed 
nobility,  had  created  also  a  class  of  land-holding  nobles, 
whose  great  estates  must  have  formed  a  not  incon- 
siderable fraction  of  the  available  lands  of  the  kingdom. 
Such  lords  did  not  necessarily  enter  upon  an  official 
career  or  participate  in  the  administration.  But  the 
nobles  and  the  peasant  serfs,  as  the  highest  and  the 
lowest,  were  not  the  only  classes  of  society.  There  was 
a  free  middle  class,  in  whose  hands  the  arts  and  indus- 
tries had  reached  such  a  high  degree  of  excellence;  but 
of  these  people  we  know  almost  nothing.  They  did 
not  build  imperishable  tombs,  such  as  have  furnished 
us  with  all  that  we  know  of  the  nobles  of  the  time;  and 
their  business  documents,  written  on  papyrus,  have  all 
perished,  in  spite  of  the  enormous  mass  of  such  ma- 
terials which  must  have  once  existed.  Later  condi- 
tions would  indicate  that  there  undoubtedly  was  a  class 
of  industrial  merchants  in  the  Old  Kingdom  who  pro- 
duced and  sold  their  own  wares.  That  there  were  free 
landholders  not  belonging  to  the  ranks  of  the  nobles  is 
also  highly  probable. 

76.  The  social  unit  was  as  in  later  human  history, 
the  family.  A  man  possessed  but  one  legal  wife,  who 
was  the  mother  of  his  heirs.  As  constantly  depicted 
on  the  monuments,  she  was  in  every  respect  his  equal, 
was  always  treated  with  the  greatest  consideration,  and 
participated  in  the  pleasures  of  her  husband  and  her 
children.    Such  relations  had  often  existed  from  the 


84 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


earliest  childhood  of  the  pair;  for  it  was  customary  in 
all  ranks  of  society  for  a  youth  to  marry  his  sister. 
Besides  the  legitimate  wife,  the  head  of  his  household, 
the  man  of  wealth  possessed  also  a  harem,  the  inmates 
of  which  maintained  no  legal  claim  upon  their  lord. 
The  children  of  the  time  show  the  greatest  respect  for 
their  parents,  and  it  was  the  duty  of  every  son  to  main- 
tain the  tomb  of  his  father.  The  respect  and  affection 
of  one's  parents  and  family  were  highly  valued,  and  we 
often  find  in  the  tombs  the  statement,  "I  was  one  be- 
loved of  his  father,  praised  of  his  mother,  whom  his 
brothers  and  sisters  loved"  (Bx\R,  I,  357).  As  among 
many  other  peoples,  the  natural  line  of  inheritance  was 
through  the  eldest  daughter,  though  a  will  might  dis- 
regard this.  The  closest  ties  of  blood  were  through  the 
mother,  and  a  man's  natural  protector,  even  in  prefer- 
ence to  his  own  father,  was  the  father  of  his  mother. 
The  debt  of  a  son  to  the  mother  who  bore  and  nour- 
ished him,  cherished  and  cared  for  him  while  he  was 
being  educated,  is  dwelt  upon  with  emphasis  by  the 
wise  men  of  the  time,  ^^^lile  there  was  probably  a 
loose  form  of  marriage  which  might  be  easily  dissolved, 
a  form  presumably  due  to  the  instability  of  fortune 
among  the  slaves  and  the  poorer  class,  yet  immorality 
was  strongly  condemned  by  the  best  sentiment.  The 
wise  man  warns  the  youth,  "Beware  of  a  woman  from 
abroad,  who  is  not  known  in  her  city.  Look  not  upon 
her  when  she  comes,  and  know  her  not.  She  is  like 
the  vortex  of  deep  waters,  whose  whirling  is  unfathom- 
able. The  woman,  whose  husband  is  far  away,  she 
writes  to  thee  every  day.  If  there  is  no  witness  with 
her  she  arises  and  spreads  her  net.  O  deadly  crime,  if 
one  hearkens!"  (PB,  I,  16,  13  )J.;  EA,  223).  To  all 
youths  marriage  and  the  foundation  of  a  household  are 


GOVERNMENT  AND  SOCIETY 


85 


recommended  as  the  only  wise  course.  Yet  there  is  no 
doubt  that  side  by  side  with  these  wholesome  ideals  of 
the  wise  and  virtuous,  there  also  existed  widespread  and 
gross  immorality. 

77.  The  outward  conditions  of  the  lower  class  were 
not  such  as  would  incline  toward  moral  living.  In  the 
towns  their  low  mud-brick,  thatch-roofed  houses  w^ere 
crowded  into  groups  and  masses,  so  huddled  together 
that  the  walls  were  usually  contiguous.  A  rough  stool, 
a  rude  box  or  two,  and  a  few  crude  pottery  jars  con- 
stituted the  furniture  of  such  a  hovel.  The  barracks 
of  the  workmen  were  an  immense  succession  of  small 
mud-brick  chambers  under  one  roof,  with  open  pas- 
sages between  long  lines  of  such  rooms.  Whole  quar- 
ters for  the  royal  levies  of  workmen  were  erected  on  this 
plan  in  the  pryamid-towns,  and  near  the  pyramids. 
On  the  great  estates  the  life  of  the  poor  was  freer,  less 
congested  and  promiscuous,  and  undoubtedly  more 
stable  and  wholesome. 

78.  The  houses  of  the  rich,  the  noble  and  official 
class  were  large  and  commodious.  Methen,  a  great 
noble  of  the  Third  Dynasty,  built  a  house  over  three 
hundred  and  thirty  feet  square  (BAR,  I,  173).  The 
materials  were  wood  and  sun-dried  brick,  and  the 
construction  was  light  and  airy  as  suited  the  climate. 
There  were  many  latticed  windows,  on  all  sides  the 
walls  of  the  living  rooms  were  largely  a  mere  skeleton, 
like  those  of  many  Japanese  houses.  Against  winds 
and  sandstorms  they  could  be  closed  by  dropping 
gaily  coloured  hangings.  Even  the  palace  of  the  king, 
though  of  course  fortified,  was  of  this  light  construction; 
hence  the  cities  of  ancient  Egypt  have  disappeared 
entirely  or  left  but  mounds  containing  a  few  scanty 
fragments  of  ruined  walls.    Beds,  chairs,  stools  and 


86 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


chests  of  ebony,  inlaid  with  ivory  in  the  finest  workman- 
ship, formed  the  chief  articles  of  furniture.  Little  or 
no  use  was  made  of  tables,  but  the  rich  vessels  of  ala- 
baster and  other  costly  stones,  of  copper,  or  some- 
times of  gold  and  silver,  were  placed  upon  bases  and 
standards  which  raised  them  from  the  floor.  The  floors 
were  covered  with  heavy  rugs,  upon  which  guests,  es- 
pecially ladies,  frequently  sat,  in  preference  to  the  chairs 
and  stools.  The  food  was  rich  and  varied;  we  find 
that  even  the  dead  desired  in  the  hereafter  "ten  differ- 
ent kinds  of  meat,  five  kinds  of  poultry,  sixteen  kinds  of 
bread  and  cakes,  six  kinds  of  wine,  four  kinds  of  beer, 
eleven  kinds  of  fruit,  besides  all  sorts  of  sweets  and 
many  other  things"  (DG,  18-26;  EA,  265). 

79.  The  costume  of  these  ancient  lords  was  simple 
in  the  extreme;  it  consisted  merely  of  a  white  linen 
kilt,  secured  above  the  hips  with  a  girdle  or  band,  and 
hanging  often  hardly  to  the  knees,  or  again  in  another 
style,  to  the  calf  of  the  leg.  The  head  was  commonly 
shaven,  and  two  styles  of  wig,  one  short  and  curly,  the 
other  with  long  straight  locks  parted  in  the  middle,  were 
worn  on  all  state  occasions.  A  broad  collar,  often  in- 
laid with  costly  stones,  generally  hung  from  the  neck, 
but  otherwise  the  body  was  bare  from  the  waist  up. 
With  long  staff  in  hand,  the  gentleman  of  the  day  was 
ready  to  receive  his  visitors,  or  to  make  a  tour  of  in- 
spection about  his  estate.  His  lady  and  her  daughters 
all  appeared  in  costumes  even  more  simple.  They  were 
clothed  in  a  thin,  close-fitting,  sleeveless,  white  linen 
garment  hanging  from  the  breast  to  the  ankles,  and 
supported  by  two  bands  passing  over  the  shoulders. 
The  skirt,  as  a  modem  modiste  would  say,  "  lacked  ful- 
ness," and  there  was  barely  freedom  to  w^alk.  A  long 
wig,  a  collar  and  necklace,  and  a  pair  of  bracelets  com- 


GOVERNMENT  AND  SOCIETY 


87 


pleted  the  lady's  costume.  Neither  she  nor  her  lord 
was  fond  of  sandals,  although  they  now  and  then  wore 
them.  AMiile  the  adults  thus  dispensed  with  all  un- 
necessary clothing,  as  we  should  expect  in  such  a  cli- 
mate, the  children  were  allowed  to  run  about  without 
any  clothing  whatever.  The  peasant  wore  merely  a 
breech-clout,  which  he  frequently  cast  off  when  at  work 
in  the  fields;  his  wife  was  clad  in  the  same  long  close- 
fitting  garment  worn  by  the  wife  of  the  noble;  but  she, 
too,  when  engaged  in  heavy  work,  such  as  winnowing 
grain,  cast  aside  all  clothing. 

80.  The  Eg}'ptian  was  passionately  fond  of  nature 
and  of  outdoor  life.  The  house  of  the  noble  was  always 
surrounded  by  a  garden,  in  w^hich  he  loved  to  plant  figs 
and  palms  and  sycamores,  laying  out  vineyards  and 
arbours,  and  excavating  before  the  house  a  pool,  lined 
wdth  masonry  coping  and  filled  with  fish.  A  large 
body  of  serv^ants  and  slaves  were  in  attendance,  both  in 
house  and  garden;  a  chief  steward  had  charge  of  the 
entire  house  and  estate,  while  an  upper  gardener 
directed  the  slaves  in  the  care  and  culture  of  the  garden. 
Phis  was  the  noble's  paradise;  here  he  spent  his  leisure 
hours  with  his  family  and  friends,  playing  at  draughts, 
listening  to  the  music  of  harp,  pipe  and  lute,  watching 
his  women  in  the  slow  and  stately  dance  of  the  time, 
while  his  children  sported  about  among  the  trees, 
splashed  in  the  pool,  or  played  with  ball,  doll  or  jump- 
ing-jack.  The  hunt  in  the  cool  shade  of  the  papyrus 
marshes,  or  out  in  the  blazing  heat  of  the  desert  equally 
attracted  him  in  his  leisure  hours.  In  this  lighter  side 
of  the  Egyptian's  life,  his  love  of  nature,  his  wholesome 
and  sunny  view  of  life,  his  never  failing  cheerfulness  in 
spite  of  his  constant  and  elaborate  preparation  for 
death,  and  especially  his  noticeable  humour,  we  find 


88 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


pervading  characteristics  of  his  nature,  which  are  so 
evident  in  his  art,  as  to  raise  it  far  above  the  sombre, 
heaviness  that  pervades  the  contemporary  art  of  Asia. 

81.  Some  five  centuries  of  uniform  government,  with 
centraHzed  control  of  the  innundation,  in  the  vast  sys- 
tem of  dykes  and  irrigation  canals,  had  brought  the 
productivity  of  the  nation  to  the  highest  level;  for  the 
economic  foundation  of  this  civilization  in  the  Old 
Kingdom,  as  in  all  other  periods  of  Egyptian  history, 
was  agriculture.  It  was  the  enormous  harvests  of 
wheat  and  barley  gathered  by  the  Egyptian  from  the 
inexhaustible  soil  of  his  valley  which  made  possible  the 
social  and  political  structure  which  we  have  been 
sketching.  Besides  grain,  the  extensive  vineyards  and 
wide  fields  of  succulent  vegetables,  which  formed  a  part 
of  eveiy  estate,  greatly  augmented  the  agricultural  re- 
sources of  the  land.  Large  herds  of  cattle,  sheep,  goats, 
droves  of  donkeys  (for  the  horse  was  unknown),  and 
vast  quantities  of  poultry,  wild  fowl,  the  large  game  of 
the  desert  and  innumerable  Nile  fish,  added  not  in- 
considerably to  the  wealth  and  prosperity  which  the 
land  was  now  enjoying.  It  was  thus  in  field  and  past- 
ure that  the  millions  of  the  kingdom  toiled  to  produce 
the  annual  wealth  by  which  its  economic  processes  con- 
tinued. 

82.  Other  sources  of  wealth  also  occupied  large 
numbers  of  workmen.  There  were  granite  quarries  at 
the  first  cataract,  sandstone  was  quarried  at  Silsileh, 
the  finer  and  harder  stones  chiefly  at  Hammamat  be- 
tween Coptos  and  the  Red  Sea,  alabaster  at  Hatnub 
behind  Amarna,  and  limestone  at  many  places,  par- 
ticularly at  Ayan  or  Troia  opposite  Memphis.  They 
brought  from  the  first  cataract  granite  blocks  twenty 
or  thirty  feet  long  and  fifty  or  sixty  tons  in  weight. 


INDUSTRY  AND  ART 


89 


They  drilled  the  toughest  of  stone,  like  diorite,  with 
tubular  drills  of  copper,  and  the  massive  lids  of  granite 
sarcophagi  were  sawn  with  long  copper  saws  which, 
like  the  drills,  were  reenforced  by  sand  or  emery. 
Miners  and  quarrymen  were  employed  in  large  num- 
bers during  the  expeditions  to  Sinai,  for  the  purpose  of 
procuring  copper,  the  green  and  blue  malachite  used 
in  fine  inlays,  the  turquoise  and  lapis-lazuli.  The 
source  of  iron,  which  was  already  used  for  tools  to  a 
limited  extent,  is  uncertain.  Bronze  was  not  yet  in 
use.  The  smiths  furnished  tools  of  copper  and  iron; 
bolts,  nails,  hinges  and  mountings  of  all  sorts  for  ar- 
tisans of  all  classes:  they  also  wrought  fine  copper 
vessels  for  the  tables  of  the  rich,  besides  splendid  copper 
weapons.  They  achieved  marA'els  also  in  the  realm  of 
plastic  art,  as  we  have  yet  to  see.  Silver  came  from 
abroad,  probably  from  Cilicia  in  Asia  Minor;  it  was 
therefore  even  more  rare  and  valuable  than  gold.  The 
quartz-veins  of  the  granite  mountains  along  the  Red 
Sea  were  rich  in  gold,  and  it  was  taken  out  in  the  Wady 
Foakhir,  on  the  Coptos  road.  It  was  likewise  mined 
largely  by  southern  tribes  and  obtained  in  trade  from 
Nubia,  in  the  eastern  deserts  of  which  it  was  also  found. 
Of  the  jewelry  worn  by  the  Pharaoh  and  his  nobles,  in 
the  Old  Kingdom,  almost  nothing  has  survived,  but  the 
reliefs  in  the  tomb-chapels  often  depict  the  goldsmith 
at  his  work,  and  his  descendants  in  the  Middle  King- 
dom have  left  works  which  show  that  the  taste  and 
cunning  of  the  First  Dynasty  had  developed  without 
cessation  in  the  Old  Kingdom. 

83.  For  the  other  important  industries  the  Nile  valley 
furnished  nearly  all  materials  indispensable  to  their 
development.  In  spite  of  the  ease  with  which  good 
building  stone  was  procured,  enormous  quantities  of 


90 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


sun-dried  bricks  were  turned  out  by  the  brick-yards, 
as  they  still  are  at  the  present  day,  and,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  masons  erected  whole  quarters  for  the  poor,  villsis 
for  the  rich,  magazines,  storehouses,  forts  and  city  walls 
of  these  cheap  and  convenient  materials.  In  the 
forestless  valley  the  chief  trees  were  the  date  palm,  the 
sycamore,  tamarisk  and  acacia,  none  of  which  fur- 
nished good  timber.  Wood  was  therefore  scarce  and 
expensive,  but  the  carpenters,  joiners  and  cabinet- 
makers flourished  nevertheless,  and  those  in  the  em- 
ploy of  the  palace  or  on  the  estates  of  the  nobles  wrought 
wonders  in  the  cedar,  imported  from  Syria,  and  the 
ebony  and  ivory  which  came  in  from  the  south.  In 
every  town  and  on  every  large  estate  ship-building  was 
constant.  There  were  many  different  styles  of  craft 
from  the  heavy  cargo-boat  for  grain  and  cattle,  to  the 
gorgeous  many-oared  dahabiyeh,''  of  the  noble,  with 
its  huge  sail.  We  shall  find  these  shipwrights  building 
the  earliest  known  sea-going  vessels,  on  the  shores  of 
the  Red  Sea  and  the  Mediterranean. 

84.  While  the  artistic  craftsman  in  stone  still  pro- 
duced magnificent  vessels,  vases,  jars,  bowls  and 
platters  in  alabaster,  diorite,  porphyry  and  other  costly 
stones,  yet  his  work  was  gradually  giving  way  to  the 
potter,  whose  rich  blue-  and  green-glazed  fayence  ves- 
sels could  not  but  win  their  way.  He  produced  also 
vast  quantities  of  large  coarse  jars  for  the  storage  of 
oils,  wines,  meats  and  other  foods  in  the  magazines  of 
the  nobles  and  the  government;  while  the  use  of  smaller 
vessels  among  the  millions  of  the  lower  classes  made 
the  manufacture  of  pottery  one  of  the  chief  industries 
of  the  country.  The  pottery  of  the  time  is  without 
decoration,  and  is  hardly  a  work  of  art.  Glass  was 
still  chiefly  employed  as  glaze  and  had  not  yet  been 


INDUSTRY  AND  ART 


91 


developed  as  an  independent  material.  In  a  land 
of  pastures  and  herds  the  production  of  leather  was  of 
course  understood.  The  tanners  had  thoroughly  mas- 
tered the  art  of  curing  the  hides,  and  produced  fine 
soft  skins,  which  they  dyed  in  all  colours,  covering 
stools  and  chairs,  beds  and  cushions,  and  furnishing  gay 
canopies  and  baldachins.  Flax  was  plentifully  culti- 
vated, and  the  Pharaoh's  harvest  of  flax  was  under  the 
control  of  a  noble  of  rank  (BAR  I,  172,  1.  5).  The 
women  of  the  serfs  on  the  great  estates  were  the  spin- 
ners and  weavers.  Even  the  coarser  varieties  for 
general  use  show  good  quality,  but  surviving  specimens 
of  the  royal  linens  are  of  such  exquisite  fineness  that 
the  ordinary  eye  requires  a  glass  to  distinguish  them 
from  silk,  and  the  limbs  of  the  wearer  could  be  dis- 
cerned through  the  fabric.  Other  vegetable  fibres  fur- 
nished by  the  marshes  supported  a  large  industry  in 
coarser  textiles.  Among  these  the  papyrus  was  the 
most  beautiful.  Broad,  light  skiffs  were  made  of  it  by 
binding  together  long  bundles  of  these  reeds;  rope  was 
twisted  from  them,  as  also  from  palm-fibre;  sandals 
were  plaited,  and  mats  woven  of  them;  but  above  all, 
when  split  into  thin  strips,  it  was  possible  to  join  them 
into  sheets  of  tough  paper,  the  well-known  papyrus. 
That  the  writing  of  Egypt  spread  to  Phoenicia  and  fur- 
nished the  classic  world  with  an  alphabet,  is  in  a  measure 
due  to  this  convenient  writing  material,  as  well  as  to  the 
method  of  writing  upon  it  with  ink  (BAR,  IV,  562, 
582). 

85.  The  Nile  was  alive  with  boats,  barges,  and  craft 
of  all  descriptions,  bearing  the  products  of  these  indus- 
tries, and  of  field  and  pasture,  to  the  treasury  of  the 
Pharaoh,  or  to  the  markets  where  they  were  disposed 
of.    Here  barter  was  the  common  means  of  •xchange; 


92 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


a  crude  pot  for  a  fish,  a  bundle  of  onions  for  a  fan;  a 
wooden  box  for  a  jar  of  ointment.  In  some  transac- 
tions,  however,  presumably  those  involving  larger 
values,  gold  and  copper  in  rings  of  a  fixed  weight,  cir- 
culated as  money,  and  stone  weights  were  already 
marked  with  their  equivalence  in  such  rings.  This 
ring-money  is  the  oldest  currency  known.  Silver  was 
rare  and  more  valuable  than  gold.  Business  had  al- 
ready reached  a  high  degree  of  development ;  books  and 
accounts  were  kept;  orders  and  receipts  were  given; 
wills  and  deeds  were  made;  and  TVTitten  contracts 
covering  long  periods  of  time  were  entered  upon.  Every 
noble  had  his  corps  of  clerks  and  secretaries,  and  the 
exchange  of  letters  and  official  documents  with  his 
colleagues  was  incessant.  Save  at  Elephantine,  these 
have  all  perished  (PKM,  82  /.). 

86.  Under  such  circumstances  an  education  in  the 
learning  of  the  time  was  indispensable  to  an  oflficial 
career.  Connected  with  the  treasury,  for  whose  multi- 
fold records  so  many  skilled  scribes  were  necessary, 
there  were  schools  where  lads  received  the  education 
and  the  training  which  fitted  them  for  the  scribal  offices, 
and  lifted  a  youth  above  all  other  classes  in  the  opinion 
of  the  scribe.  The  content  of  the  instruction,  besides 
innumerable  moral  precepts,  many  of  them  most  whole- 
some and  rational,  was  chiefly  the  method  of  writing. 
The  elaborate  hieroglyphic  with  its  numerous  animal 
and  human  figures,  such  as  the  reader  has  often  seen  on 
the  monuments  in  our  museums,  or  in  works  on  Eg}^pt, 
was  too  slow  and  laborious  a  method  of  writing  for  the 
needs  of  every-day  business.  The  attempt  to  write 
these  figures  rapidly  with  ink  upon  papyrus  had  gradu- 
ally resulted  in  reducing  each  sign  to  a  mere  outline, 
much  rounded  off  and  abbreviated.    This  cursive 


INDUSTRY  AND  ART 


93 


business  hand,  which  we  call  "hieratic,"  had  already 
begun  under  the  earliest  dynasties,  and  by  the  rise  of 
the  Old  Kingdom  it  had  developed  into  a  graceful  and 
rapid  system  of  writing,  which  showed  no  nearer  re- 
semblance to  the  hieroglyphic  than  does  our  o^ti  hand- 
writing to  our  print.  Thus  was  created  for  all  time 
the  class  distinction  between  the  illiterate  and  the 
learned,  still  a  problem  of  modern  society.  It  was  the 
acquirement  of  this  method  of  writing  which  enabled 
the  lad  to  enter  upon  the  coveted  official  career  as  a 
scribe,  to  become  at  last  overseer  of  a  magazine,  or 
steward  of  an  estate. 

87.  Education  thus  consisted  solely  of  the  practically 
useful  equipment  for  an  official  career.  Knowledge  of 
nature  and  of  the  external  world  as  a  whole  was  sought 
only  as  practical  necessity  prompted  such  search.  It 
never  occurred  to  the  Egyptian  to  enter  upon  the  search 
for  truth  for  its  own  sake.  Under  these  circumstances 
the  science  of  the  time,  if  we  may  speak  of  it  as  such  at 
all,  was  such  a  knowledge  of  natural  conditions  as 
enabled  the  active  men  of  this  age  to  accomplish  those 
practical  tasks  with  which  they  were  daily  confronted. 
They  had  much  practical  acquaintance  with  astronomy, 
developed  out  of  that  knowledge  which  had  enabled 
their  ancestors  to  introduce  a  rational  calendar  nearly 
thirteen  centuries  before  the  rise  of  the  Old  Kingdom. 
They  had  already  roughly  mapped  the  heavens,  iden- 
tified the  more  prominent  fixed  stars,  and  developed  a 
system  of  observation  with  instruments  sufficiently  ac- 
curate to  determine  the  positions  of  stars  for  practical 
purposes;  but  they  had  produced  no  theory  of  the 
heavenly  bodies  as  a  whole,  nor  would  it  ever  have 
occurred  to  the  Egyptian  that  such  an  attempt  was  use- 
ful or  worth  the  trouble.    In  mathematics  all  the  ordi- 


94 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


nary  arithmetical  processes  were  demanded  in  the  daily 
transactions  of  business  and  government,  and  had  long 
since  come  into  common  use  among  the  scribes.  Frac- 
tions, however,  caused  diflSculty.  The  scribes  could 
operate  only  with  those  having  one  as  the  numerator, 
and  all  other  fractions  were  of  necessity  resolved  into  a 
series  of  several,  each  with  one  as  the  numerator.  The 
only  exception  was  two-thirds.  Elementary  algebraic 
problems  were  also  solved  without  difficulty.  In 
geometry  they  were  able  to  master  the  simpler  proposi- 
tions; while  the  area  of  a  trapezoid  caused  difficulty 
and  error,  that  of  the  circle  had  been  determined  with 
close  accuracy.  The  necessity  of  determining  the  con- 
tent of  a  pile  of  grain  had  led  to  a  roughly  approximate 
result  in  the  computation  of  the  content  of  the  hemi- 
sphere, and  a  circular  granary  to  that  of  the  cylinder. 
But  no  theoretical  or  abstract  propositions  were  dis- 
cussed, and  the  whole  science  attempted  only  those 
practical  problems  which  were  continually  met  in  daily 
life.  The  laying  out  of  a  ground-plan  like  the  square 
base  of  the  Great  Pyramid  could  be  accomplished  with 
amazing  accuracy,  and  the  orientation  displays  a  nicety 
that  almost  rivals  the  results  of  modern  instruments. 
A  highly  developed  knowledge  of  mechanics  was  at 
the  command  of  the  architect  and  craftsman.  The 
arch  was  employed  in  masonry,  and  can  be  dated  as  far 
back  as  the  thirtieth  century  B.  c,  the  oldest  dated 
arches  known.  In  the  application  of  power  to  the 
mcvement  of  great  monuments  only  the  simplest  de- 
vices were  employed;  the  pulley  was  unknown,  and 
probably  the  roller  also.  Medicine  was  already  in 
possession  of  much  empirical  wisdom,  displaying  close 
and  accurate  observation;  the  calling  of  the  physician 
already  existed,  and  the  court  physician  of  the  Pharaoh 


INDUSTRY  AND  ART 


96 


vVas  a  man  of  rank  and  influence.  His  recipes  were 
many  of  them  rational  and  useful;  but  more  were 
naively  fanciful,  like  the  prescription  of  a  decoction 
of  the  hair  of  a  black  calf  to  prevent  gray  hair.  Most 
depended  upon  magic  for  their  eJQ&cacy,  because  disease 
was  due  to  hostile  spirits.  They  had  already  been 
collected  and  recorded  in  papyrus  rolls  (BAR,  I,  246), 
and  the  recipes  of  this  age  were  famous  for  their  virtue 
in  later  times.  Some  of  them  finally  crossed  with  the 
Greeks  to  Europe,  w^here  they  are  still  in  use  among 
the  peasantry  of  the  present  day. 

88.  Art  flourished  as  nowhere  else  in  the  ancient 
world.  Here  again  the  Egyptian's  attitude  of  mind 
was  not  wholly  that  which  characterized  the  art  of  the 
later  Greek  world.  Art  as  the  pursuit  and  the  produc- 
tion exclusively  of  the  ideally  beautiful  was  unknown 
to  him.  He  loved  beauty  as  found  in  nature,  his  spirit 
demanded  such  beauty  in  his  home  and  surroundings. 
The  lotus  blossomed  on  the  handle  of  his  spoon,  and 
his  wine  sparkled  in  the  deep  blue  calyx  of  the  same 
flower;  the  muscular  limb  of  the  ox  in  carved  ivory 
upheld  the  couch  upon  which  he  slept,  the  ceiling  over 
his  head  was  a  starry  heaven  resting  upon  palm  trunk 
columns,  each  crowned  with  its  graceful  tuft  of  droop- 
ing foliage;  or  papyrus  stalks  rose  from  the  floor  to 
support  tlie  azure  roof  upon  their  swaying  blossoms; 
doves  and  butterflies  flitted  across  his  in-door  sky;  his 
floors  w^ere  frescoed  with  the  opulent  green  of  rich 
marsh-grasses,  with  fish  gliding  among  their  roots, 
where  the  wild  ox  tossed  his  head  at  the  birds  twitter- 
ing on  the  swaying  grass-tops,  as  they  strove  in  vain  to 
d:ive  away  the  stealthy  weasel  creeping  up  to  plunder 
their  nests.  Everywhere  the  objects  of  every-day  life 
m  the  homes  of  the  rich  showed  unconscious  beauty  of 


96 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


line  and  fine  balance  of  proportion,  while  the  beauty  of 
nature  and  of  out-of-door  life  which  spoke  to  the  be- 
holder in  the  decoration  on  every  hand,  lent  a  certain 
distinction  even  to  the  most  commonplace  objects. 
The  Egyptian  thus  sought  to  beautify  and  to  make 
beautiful  al)  objects  of  utility,  but  all  such  objects 
served  some  practical  use.  He  was  not  inclined  to 
make  a  beautiful  thing  solely  for  its  beauty.  In 
sculpture,  therefore,  the  practical  dominated.  The 
splendid  statues  of  the  Old  Kingdom  were  not  made  to 
be  erected  in  the  market-place,  but  solely  to  be  ma- 
soned up  in  the  mastaba  tomb,  that  they  might  be  of 
practical  advantage  to  the  deceased  in  the  hereafter 
(Sect.  63).  It  was  this  motive  chiefly  to  which  the 
marvellous  development  of  portrait  sculpture  in  the 
Old  Kingdom  was  due. 

89.  The  sculptor  might  either  put  his  model  into 
stone  by  a  process  of  exactly  imitating  his  every  feat- 
ure, or  again  depict  him  in  accordance  with  a  convene 
tional  ideal.  Both  styles,  representing  the  same  man, 
though  strikingly  difierent,  may  appear  in  the  same 
tomb.  Every  device  was  adopted  to  increase  the  re- 
semblance to  life.  The  whole  statue  was  coloured  in 
the  natural  hues,  the  eyes  were  inlaid  in  rock-crystal, 
ard  the  life  likeness  with  which  these  Memphite  sculpt- 
ures were  instinct  has  never  been  surpassed.  The 
finest  of  the  sitting  statues  is  the  well-known  portrait  cf 
Khafre,  the  builder  of  the  second  pyramid  of  Gizeh. 
In  the  most  difficult  stone,  like  diorite,  the  sculptor 
skilfully  met  the  limitations  imposed  upon  him  by  the 
intensely  hard  and  refractory  material,  and  while 
obliged,  therefore,  to  treat  the  subject  summarily,  he 
slightly  emphasized  salient  features,  lest  the  work 
should  lack  pronounced  character.    These  unknown 


INDUSTRY  AND  ART 


97 


masters,  who  must  take  their  place  among  the  world's 
great  sculptors,  while  contending  with  technical  diffi- 
culties which  no  modern  sculptor  attempts,  were  even 
more  successful  in  softer  material,  like  limestone,  where 
they  gained  a  treer  hand,  although  the  number  of 
postures  was  strictly  limited  by  convention.  In  copper 
the  sculptors  of  Pepi  I  even  produced  a  life-size  statue 
of  the  king,  the  head  of  which  is  one  of  the  strongest 
portraits  surviving  from  antiquity  (BH,  104,  Figs.  53- 
54).  Superb  animal  forms,  like  the  granite  lion's  head 
from  the  sun-temple  of  Nuserre  were  also  wrought  in 
the  hardest  stone. 

The  goldsmith  also  invaded  the  realm  of  plastic 
art.  In  the  "  gold-house,"  as  his  workshop  was  called, 
he  turned  sculptor,  and  produced  for  the  temples  such 
cultus  statues  of  the  gods  as  the  magnificent  figure  of 
the  sacred  hawk  of  Hieraconpolis,  of  which  Quibell 
found  the  head  in  the  temple  at  that  place. 

90.  In  relief,  now  greatly  in  demand  for  temple 
decoration,  and  the  chapel  of  the  mastaba  tomb,  the 
Egyptian  was  confronted  by  the  problem  of  foreshort- 
ening and  perspective.  He  must  put  objects  having 
thickness  and  roundness  upon  a  flat  surface.  How 
this  should  be  done  had  been  determined  for  him  be- 
fore the  beginning  of  the  Old  Kingdom.  A  conven- 
tional style  had  already  been  established  before  the 
Third  Dynasty,  and  that  style  was  now  sacred  and  in- 
violable tradition.  While  a  certain  freedom  of  develop- 
ment survived,  that  style  in  its  fundamentals  persisted 
throughout  the  history  of  Egyptian  art,  even  after  the 
artist  had  learned  to  perceive  its  shortcomings.  The 
age  which  produced  it  had  not  learned  to  maintain  one 
stand-point  in  the  drawing  of  any  given  scene  or  object; 
two  different  points  of  view  were  combined  in  the  same 


98 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


figure :  in  drawing  a  man  a  front  view  of  the  eyes  and 
shoulders  was  regularly  placed  upon  a  profile  of  the 
trunk  and  head.  This  unconscious  incongruity  was 
afterward  also  extended  to  temporal  relations,  and  suc- 
cessive instants  of  time  were  combined  in  the  same 
scene.  Accepting  these  limitations,  the  reliefs  of  the 
Old  Kingdom,  which  are  really  slightly  modelled 
drawings,  are  often  sculptures  of  great  beauty,  es- 
pecially in  their  exquisite  modelling.  It  is  from  the 
scenes  which  the  Memphite  sculptor  placed  on  the  walls 
of  the  mastaba  chapels  that  we  learn  all  that  we  know 
of  the  life  and  customs  of  the  Old  Kingdom.  All  such 
reliefs  were  coloured,  so  that  when  completed  we  may 
call  them  raised  and  modelled  paintings;  at  least  they 
do  not  fall  within  the  domain  of  plastic  art,  as  do  Greek 
reliefs.  Painting  was  also  practiced  independently, 
and  the  familiar  line  of  ducks  from  a  tomb  at  Medum 
(BH,  Fig.  55)  well  illustrates  the  strength  and  freedom 
with  which  the  Memphite  of  the  time  could  depict  the 
animal  forms  with  which  he  was  familiar. 

91.  The  sculpture  of  the  Old  Kingdom  may  be  char- 
acterized as  a  natural  and  unconscious  realism,  exer- 
cised with  a  technical  ability  of  the  highest  order.  In 
the  practice  of  this  art  the  sculptor  of  the  Old  King- 
dom in  some  respects  compares  favourably  even  with 
modem  artists.  He  was  the  only  artist  in  the  early  Ori- 
ent who  could  put  the  human  body  into  stone,  and  liv- 
ing in  a  society  such  that  he  was  daily  familiarized  with 
the  nude  form,  he  treated  it  with  sincerity  and  frank- 
ness. I  cannot  forbear  quoting'  the  words  of  an  un- 
prejudiced classical  archaeologist,  M.  Georges  Perrot, 
who  says  of  the  Memphite  sculptors  of  the  Old  Kingdom, 
"It  must  be  acknowledged  that  they  produced  works 
which  are  not  to  be  surpassed  in  their  way  by  the  great- 


INDUSTRY  AND  ART 


99 


est  portraits  of  modern  Europe"  (PCHA,  II,  194).  The 
sculpture  of  the  Old  Kingdom,  however,  was  super- 
ficial; it  was  not  interpretative,  did  not  embody  ideas 
in  stone  and  shows  little  contemplation  of  the  emotions 
and  forces  of  life.  It  is  characteristic  of  the  age  that 
we  must  speak  of  this  Memphite  art  as  a  whole.  We 
know  none  of  its  greatest  masters,  and  only  the  names 
of  an  artist  or  two  during  the  whole  period  of  Egyptian 
history. 

92.  It  is  only  very  recently  that  we  have  been  able  to 
discern  the  fundamentals  of  Old  Kingdom  architecture. 
Too  little  has  been  preserved  of  the  house  and  palace 
of  the  time  to  permit  of  safe  generalizations  upon  the 
light  and  aiiy  style  of  architecture  which  they  repre- 
sent. It  is  only  the  massive  stone  structures  of  this 
age  which  have  been  preser^-ed.  Besides  the  mastabas 
and  pyramids,  which  we  have  already  briefly  noticed, 
the  temple  is  the  great  architectural  achievement  of 
the  Old  Kingdom.  Its  arrangement  has  been  touched 
upon  in  the  preceding  chapter.  The  architect  em- 
ployed only  straight  lines,  these  being  perpendiculars 
and  horizontals,  very  boldly  and  felicitously  combined. 
The  arch,  although  known,  was  not  employed  as  a 
member  in  architecture.  In  order  to  carry  the  roof 
across  the  void,  either  the  simplest  of  stone  piers,  a 
square  pillar  of  a  single  block  of  granite  was  employed, 
or  an  already  elaborate  and  beautiful  monolithic  column 
of  granite  supported  the  architrave.  These  columns, 
the  earliest  known  in  the  history  of  architecture,  may 
have  been  employed  before  the  Old  Kingdom,  for  they 
are  fully  developed  in  the  Fifth  Dynasty.  They  repre- 
sent a  palm-tree,  the  capital  being  the  crown  of  foliage; 
or  they  are  conceived  as  a  bundle  of  papyrus  stalks, 
bearing  the  architrave  upon  the  cluster  of  buds  at  the 


100 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


top,  which  form  the  capital.  The  proportions  are 
graceful  and  elegant,  and  surrounded  with  such  ex- 
quisite colonnades  as  these,  flanked  by  brightly  coloured 
reliefs,  the  courts  of  the  Old  Kingdom  temples  belong 
to  the  noblest  architectural  conceptions  bequeathed  to 
us  by  antiquity.  Egypt  thus  became  the  source  of 
columned  architecture,  ^^^lile  the  Babylonian  build- 
ers displayed  notable  skill  in  giving  varied  architectural 
effect  to  great  masses,  they  were  limited  to  this,  and 
the  colonnade  was  unknown  to  them;  whereas  the 
Egyptian  already  at  the  close  of  the  fourth  millennium 
before  Christ  had  solved  the  fundamental  problem  of 
great  architecture,  developing  with  the  most  refined 
artistic  sense  and  the  greatest  mechanical  skill  the 
treatment  of  voids  (as  opposed  to  the  masses  of  the 
Babylonian),  and  thus  originating  the  colonnade. 

93.  The  age  was  dealing  with  material  things  and 
developing  material  resources,  and  in  such  an  age 
literature  has  little  opportunity;  it  was  indeed  hrrdly 
born  as  yet.  The  sages  of  the  court,  the  wise  old 
viziers,  Kegemne,  Imhotep,  and  Ptahhotep,  had  put 
into  proverbs  the  wholesome  wisdom  of  life,  which  a 
long  career  had  taught  them,  and  these  were  probably 
already  circulating  in  written  form,  although  the  oldest 
manuscript  of  such  lore  which  we  possess  dates  from 
the  Middle  Kingdom.  The  Palermo  Stone  (see  p.  47) 
was  but  a  bald  catalogue  of  events,  achievements  and 
temple  donations,  without  literary  form.  It  is  the 
oldest  surviving  fragment  of  royal  annals.  As  the 
desire  to  perpetuate  the  story  of  a  distinguished  life 
increased,  the  nobles  began  to  record  in  their  tombs 
simple  narratives  characterized  by  a  primitive  direct- 
ness, in  long  successions  of  simple  sentences,  each 
showing  the  same  construction,  but  lacking  expressed 


INDUSTRY  AND  ART 


101 


connectives  (BAR,  I,  292-294;  306-315;  319-324). 
Events  and  honours  common  to  the  lives  of  the  leading 
nobles  were  related  by  them  all  in  identical  words, 
so  that  conventionT.l  phrases  had  already  gained  a  place 
in  literature  not  unlike  the  inviolable  canons  of  their 
graphic  art.  There  no  individuality.  The  mortu° 
ary  texts  in  the  pyramids  display  sometimes  a  rude 
force,  and  an  almost  savage  fire.  They  contain  scat- 
tered fragments  of  the  old  myths,  but  whether  these 
had  then  enjoyed  more  than  an  oral  existence  we  do 
not  know.  Mutilated  religious  poems,  exhibiting  in 
form  the  beginnings  of  parallelism,  are  imbedded  in 
this  literature,  and  are  doubtless  examples  of  the  oldest 
poetry  of  earliest  Egypt.  All  this  literature,  both  in 
form  and  content,  betrays  its  origin  among  men  of  the 
early  world.  Folk  songs,  the  offspring  of  the  toiling 
peasant's  flitting  fancy,  or  of  the  personal  devotion  of 
the  household  servant,  were  common  then  as  now,  and 
in  two  of  them  which  have  survived  we  hear  the  shep- 
herd talking  with  the  sheep,  or  the  bearers  of  the  sedan- 
chair  assuring  their  lord  in  song  that  to  them  the  vehicle 
is  lighter  when  he  occupies  it  than  when  it  is  empty 
(BH,  p.  92,  Fig.  39;  DDG,  II,  pi.  viii).  Music  also 
was  cultivated;  and  there  was  a  director  of  the  royal 
music  at  the  court.  The  instruments  were  a  small 
harp,  on  which  the  performer  played  sitting,  and  two 
kinds  of  flute,  a  large  and  a  smaller.  Instrumental 
music  was  always  accompanied  by  the  voice,  revers- 
ing modem  custom,  and  the  full  orchestra  consisted 
of  two  harps  and  two  flutes,  a  large  and  a  small  one. 
Of  the  character  and  nature  of  the  music  played  or 
to  what  extent  the  scale  was  understood,  we  can  say 
nothing. 

Such,  in  so  far  as  we  have  been  able  to  condense  our 


102  THE  OLD  KINGDOM 

present  knowledge,  was  the  active  and  aggressive  age 
which  unfolds  before  us,  as  the  kings  of  the  Thinite 
dynasties  give  way  to  those  of  Memphis.  It  now  re- 
mains for  us  to  trace  the  career  of  this,  the  most  ancient 
state,  whose  constitution  is  still  discernible. 


VI 

THE  PYRAMID  BUILDERS 

94.  At  the  close  of  the  so-called  Second  Dynasty, 
early  in  the  thirtieth  century  b.  c,  the  Thinites,  ac- 
cording to  Manetho,  were  finally  dislodged  from  the 
position  of  power  which  they  had  maintained  so  well 
for  over  four  centuries,  and  a  Memphite  family,  whose 
home  was  the  "White  Wall,"  gained  the  ascendancy. 
But  there  is  evidence  that  the  sharp  dynastic  division 
recorded  by  Manetho  never  took  place,  and  this  final 
supremacy  of  Memphis  may  have  been  nothing  more 
than  a  gradual  transition  thither  by  the  Thinites  them- 
selves. In  any  case  the  great  queen,  Nemathap,  the 
wife  of  King  Khasekhemui,  who  was  probably  the  last 
king  of  the  Second  Dynasty,  was  evidently  the  mother 
of  Zoser,  with  whose  accession  the  predominance  of 
Memphis  becomes  apparent.  During  this  Memphite 
supremacy,  the  development  which  the  Thinites  had 
pushed  so  vigorously,  was  skilfully  and  ably  fostered. 
For  over  five  hundred  years  the  kingdom  continued  to 
flourish,  but  of  these  five  centuries  only  the  last  two 
have  left  us  even  scanty  literary  remains,  and  we  are 
obliged  to  draw  our  meagre  knowledge  of  its  first  three 
centuries  almost  entirelv  from  material  documents,  the 
monuments  which  it  has  left  us.  In  some  degree  such 
a  task  is  like  attempting  to  reconstruct  a  history  of 
Athens  in  the  age  of  Pericles,  based  entirely  upon  the 

103 


104 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


temples,  sculptures,  vases,  and  other  material  remains 
surviving  from  his  time.  While  the  multifold  life  which 
was  then  unfolding  in  Athens  involved  a  mental  endow- 
ment and  a  condition  of  state  and  society  which  Egypt, 
even  at  her  best,  never  knew,  yet  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that,  tremendous  as  is  the  impression  which  we 
receive  from  the  monuments  of  the  Old  Kingdom,  they 
are  but  the  skeleton,  upon  which  we  might  put  flesh, 
and  endue  the  whole  with  life,  if  but  the  chief  literary 
monuments  of  the  time  had  survived.  It  is  a  diflBcult 
task  to  discern  behind  these  Titanic  achievements  the 
busy  world  of  commerce,  industry,  administration,  so- 
ciety, art,  and  literature  out  of  which  they  grew.  Of 
half  a  millennium  of  political  change,  of  overthrow  and 
usurpation,  of  growth  and  decay  of  institutions,  of  local 
governors,  helpless  under  the  strong  grasp  of  the 
Pharaoh,  or  shaking  off  the  restraint  of  a  weak  mon- 
arch, and  developing  into  independent  barons,  so  power- 
ful at  last  as  to  bring  in  the  final  dissolution  of  the  state 
— of  all  this  we  gain  but  fleeting  and  occasional  glimpses, 
where  more  must  be  guessed  than  can  be  kno\\Ti. 

95.  The  first  prominent  figure  in  the  Old  Kingdom 
is  that  of  Zoser,  with  whom,  as  we  have  said,  the  Third 
Dynasty  arose.  It  was  evidently  his  strong  hand 
which  firmly  established  Memphite  supremacy.  He 
continued  the  exploitation  of  the  copper  mines  in  Sinai, 
while  in  the  south  he  extended  his  power  in  some  form 
of  control  over  the  turbulent  Nubian  tribes,  just  beyond 
the  first  cataract,  if  we  may  credit  a  late  tradition  of 
the  priests  (SU,  II,  22-26).  The  success  of  Zoser's 
efforts  was  perhaps  in  part  due  to  the  counsel  of  the 
great  wise  man,  Imhotep,  who  was  one  of  his  chief 
advisers.  In  priestly  wisdom,  in  magic,  in  the  formula- 
tion of  wise  proverbs,  in  medicine  and  architecture,  this 


THE  PYRAMID  BUILDERS 


103 


remarkable  figure  of  Zoser's  reign  left  so  notable  a 
reputation  that  his  name  was  never  forgotten,  and  two 
thousand  five  hundred  years  after  his  death  he  had 
become  a  god  of  medicine,  in  whom  the  Greeks,  who 
called  him  Imouthes,  recognized  their  own  Asklepios 
(SU,  II).  Manetho  records  the  tradition  that  stone 
building  was  first  introduced  by  Zoser,  whom  he  calls 
Tosorthros,  and  although,  as  we  have  seen,  stone  struct- 
ures of  earlier  date  are  now  known,  yet  the  great  repu- 
tation as  a  builder  ascribed  to  Zoser's  counsellor,  Im- 
hotep,  is  no  accident,  and  it  is  evident  that  Zoser's  reign 
marked  the  beginning  of  extensive  building  in  stone. 
Until  his  reign  the  royal  tombs  were  built  of  sun-dried 
bricks,  only  containing  in  one  instance  a  granite  floor 
and  in  another  a  chamber  of  limestone.  This  bricjc 
tomb  was  greatly  improved  by  Zoser,  who  built  at  Bet 
Khallaf,  near  Abydos,  an  elaborate  brick  mastaba,  the 
first  of  the  two  tombs  now  customarily  erected  by  the 
Pharaoh  (infra,  p.  72;  GMBK).  Doubtless  assisted 
by  Imhotep,  he  undertook  the  construction  of  a  royal 
mausoleum  on  a  more  ambitious  plan  than  any  of  his 
ancestors  had  ever  attempted.  In  the  desert  behind 
Memphis  he  laid  out  a  large  mastaba  of  stone,  which 
he  enlarged  into  a  tall  terraced  monument  one  hundred 
and  ninety  feet  high,  by  superimposing  five  successively 
smaller  mastabas  upon  it.  It  is  often  called  the  "ter- 
raced pyramid,"  and  does  indeed  constitute  the  tran- 
sitional form  between  the  mastaba,  first  built  in  Zoser's 
time  at  Bet  Khallaf,  and  the  pyramid  of  his  successors, 
which  immediately  followed.  It  is  the  first  large  struct- 
ure of  stone  known  in  history. 

96.  The  wealth  and  power  evident  in  Zoser's  costly 
and  imposing  tomb  were  continued  by  the  other  kings 
of  the  dynasty,  whose  order  and  histor}^  it  is  as  yet  im- 


106 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


possible  to  reconstruct.  It  is  probable  that  we  should 
attribute  to  one  of  them  the  great  blunted  stone  pryamid 
of  Dahshur,  and  if  this  conclusion  be  correct,  such  a 
monument  is  a  striking  testimony  to  the  wealth  and 
power  of  this  Third  Dynasty.  At  the  close  of  the 
dynasty  the  nation  was  enjoying  wide  prosperity  under 
the  vigorous  and  far-seeing  Snefru.  He  built  vessels 
nearly  one  hundred  and  seventy  feet  long,  for  traffic 
and  administration  upon  the  river;  he  continued  the 
development  of  the  copper  mines  in  Sinai,  where  he 
defeated  the  native  tribes  and  left  a  record  of  his  tri- 
umph (BAR,  I,  146-147,  168-169).  He  placed 
Egyptian  interests  in  the  peninsula  upon  such  a  per- 
manent basis  that  he  was  later  looked  upon  as  the 
founder  and  establisher  of  Egyptian  supremacy  there, 
and  he  became  a  patron  god  of  the  district  (LD,  II, 
137g;  BAR,  I,  722,  731).  He  regulated  the  eastern 
frontier,  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  we  should  attribute 
to  him  the  erection  of  the  fortresses  at  the  Bitter  Lakes 
in  the  Isthmus  of  Suez,  which  existed  already  in  the 
Fifth  Dynasty.  Roads  and  stations  in  the  eastern 
Delta  still  bore  his  name  fifteen  hundred  years  after 
his  death.  In  the  west  it  is  not  improbable  that  he 
already  controlled  one  of  the  northern  oases.  ]More 
than  all  this,  he  opened  up  commerce  with  the  north 
and  sent  a  fleet  of  forty  vessels  to  the  Phoenician  coast 
to  procure  cedar  logs  from  the  slopes  of  Lebanon. 
This  i?  the  earliest  known  naval  expedition  on  the  open 
sea.  He  was  equally  aggressive  in  the  south,  where  he 
conducted  a  campaign  against  northern  Nubia,  bring- 
ing back  seven  thousand  prisoners,  and  two  hundred 
thousand  large  and  small  caltle  (BAR,  I,  165,  5;  312, 1. 
21;  174,  1.  9;  146). 

97.  The  first  of  the  Cwn  tombs  built  by  Snefru  is 


THE  PYR.A3IID  BUILDERS 


107 


situated  at  ]\Iedum,  between  Memphis  and  the  Fayum. 
Erected  as  a  terraced  monument,  like  that  of  Zoser,  its 
terraces  were  finally  filled  out  in  one  smooth  slope  from 
top  to  bottom  at  a  different  angle,  thus  producing  the 
first  pyramid.  Like  Zoser,  Snefru's  first  tomb  was 
much  less  pretentious  than  his  second,  the  great  stone 
pyramid  which  he  built  at  Dahshur,  nearer  Memphis. 
Three  hundred  years  later  we  still  find  its  town  and 
priesthood  exempt  by  royal  decree  from  all  state  dues 
and  levies  (AZ,  42,  1  ]]•). 

98.  With  Snefru  the  rising  tide  of  prosperity  and 
power  has  reached  the  high  level  which  made  the  sub- 
sequent splendour  of  the  Old  Kingdom  possible.  AYith 
him  there  had  also  growTi  up  the  rich  and  powerful 
noble  and  official  class,  whose  life  we  have  already 
sketched — a  class  who  are  no  longer  content  with  the 
simple  brick  tombs  of  their  ancestors  at  Abydos  and 
vicinity.  Their  splendid  mastabas  of  hewn  limestone 
are  still  grouped  as  formerly  about  the  tomb  of  the 
king  whom  they  ser^'ed.  It  is  the  surviving  remains 
in  these  imposing  cities  of  the  dead,  dominated  by  the 
towering  mass  of  the  pyramid,  which  has  enabled  us  to 
gain  a  picture  of  the  life  of  the  great  kingdom,  the 
threshold  of  which  we  have  now  crossed.  Behind  us 
lies  the  long  slow  development  which  contained  the 
promise  of  all  that  is  before  us;  but  that  development 
also  we  were  obliged  to  trace  in  the  tomb  of  the  early 
EgA^ptian,  as  we  have  followed  him  from  the  sand-heap 
that  covered  his  primitive  ancestor  to  the  colossal 
p^Tamid  of  the  Pharaoh. 

99.  The  passing  of  the  great  family  of  which  Snefru 
was  the  most  prominent  representative  did  not,  as  far 
as  we  can  now  see,  effect  any  serious  change  in  the 
history  of  the  nation.    Indeed  Khufu,  the  founder  of 


108 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


the  so-called  Fourth  Dynasty,  may  possibly  have  been 
a  scion  of  the  Third.  There  was  in  his  harem  at  least 
a  lady  who  had  also  been  a  favourite  of  Snefru.  Khufu, 
however,  was  not  a  Memphite.  He  came  from  a  town 
of  middle  Egypt  near  modern  Benihasan,  which  was 
afterward,  for  this  reason,  called  ''Menat-Khufu," 
"Nurse  of  Khufu. We  have  no  means  of  knowing: 
how  the  noble  of  a  provincial  town  succeeded  in  sup- 
planting the  line  of  the  powerful  Snefru  and  becoming 
the  founder  of  a  new  line.  We  only  see  him  looming 
grandly  from  the  obscure  array  of  Pharaohs  of  his  time, 
his  greatness  proclaimed  by  the  noble  tomb  which  he 
erected  at  Gizeh,  opposite  modern  Cairo.  How  strong 
and  effective  must  have  been  the  organization  of 
Khufu's  government  we  appreciate  in  some  measure 
when  we  learn  that  his  pyramid  contains  some  two 
million  three  hundred  thousand  blocks,  each  weighing 
on  the  average  two  and  a  half  tons  (PG).  Herodotus 
relates  a  tradition  current  in  his  time  that  the  pyramid 
had  demanded  the  labour  of  a  hundred  thousand  men 
during  twenty  years,  and  Petrie  has  shown  that  these 
numbers  are  quite  credible.  The  maintenance  of  this 
city  of  a  hundred  thousand  labourers,  who  were  non- 
producing  and  a  constant  burden  on  the  state,  the  ad- 
justment of  the  labour  in  the  quarries,  so  as  to  ensure 
an  uninterrupted  accession  of  material  around  the 
base  of  the  pyramid,  will  have  entailed  the  development 
of  a  small  state  in  itself.  Not  merely  was  this  work 
quantitatively  so  formidable,  but  in  quality  also  it  is 
the  most  remarkable  material  enterprise  known  to  us 
anywhere  in  this  early  world,  for  the  most  ponderous 
masonry  in  the  pyramid  amazes  the  modern  beholder 
by  its  fineness.  The  pyramid  is,  or  was,  about  four 
hundred  and  eighty-one  feet  high,  and  its  square  base, 


THE  PYRAJMID  BUILDERS 


109 


covering  some  thirteen  acres,  measured  seven  hundred 
and  fifty-five  feet  on  a  side,  but  the  average  error  is 
''less  than  a  ten-thousandth  of  the  side  in  equaHty,  in 
squareness  and  in  level"  (PHE,  I,  40);  although  a  rise 
of  ground  on  the  site  of  the  monument  prevented  direct 
measurements  from  corner  to  corner.  Some  of  the 
masonry  finish  is  so  fine  that  blocks  weighing  many 
tons  are  set  together  with  seams  of  considerable  length, 
showing  a  joint  of  one  ten-thousandth  of  an  inch,  and 
involving  edges  and  surfaces  "equal  to  optician's  work 
of  the  present  day,  but  on  a  scale  of  acres  instead  of 
feet  or  yards  of  material"  (ibid.).  The  entire  monu- 
ment is  of  limestone,  except  the  main  sepulchral  cham- 
ber, which  is  of  granite.  The  passages  were  skilfully 
closed  at  successive  places  by  plug-blocks  and  port- 
cuUisses  of  granite;  while  the  exterior,  clothed  with  an 
exquisitely  fitted  casing  of  limestone,  which  has  since 
been  quarried  away,  nowhere  betrayed  the  place  of 
entrance,  located  in  the  eighteenth  course  of  masonry 
above  the  base  near  the  centre  of  the  north  face. 
Three  small  pyramids,  built  for  members  of  Khufu's 
family  stand  in  a  line  close  by  on  the  south.  The 
pyramid  was  surrounded  by  a  wide  pavement  of  lime- 
stone, and  on  the  east  front  was  the  temple  for  the 
mortuary  ser\'ice  of  Khufu,  of  which  all  but  portions 
of  a  splendid  basalt  pavement  has  disappeared.  The 
remains  of  the  causeway  leading  up  from  the  plain  to 
the  temple  still  rise  in  sombre  ruin,  disclosing  only  the 
rough  core  masonry,  across  which  the  modern  village 
of  Kafr  is  now  built.  Further  south  is  a  section  of 
the  wall  which  surrounded  the  town  on  the  plain  below, 
probably  the  place  of  Khufu's  residence,  and  perhaps 
the  residence  of  the  dynasty.  In  leaving  the  tomb  of 
Khufu  our  admiration  for  the  monument,  whether 


110 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


stirred  by  its  vast  dimensions  or  by  the  fineness  of  its 
masonry,  should  not  obscure  its  real  and  final  signifi- 
cance; for  the  great  pyramid  is  the  earliest  and  most 
impressive  witness  surv^iving  from  the  ancient  world, 
to  the  final  emergence  of  organized  society  from  pre- 
historic chaos  and  local  conflict,  thus  coming  for  the 
first  time  completely  under  the  power  of  a  far-reaching 
and  comprehensive  centralization  effected  by  one  con- 
trolHng  mind. 

100.  Khufu's  name  has  been  found  from  Desuk  in 
the  northwestern  and  Bubastis  in  the  eastern  Delta,  to 
Hieraconpolis  in  the  south,  but  we  know  almost  nothing 
of  his  other  achievements.  He  continued  operations  in 
the  peninsula  of  Sinai  (BAR,  I,  176);  perhaps  opened 
for  the  first  time,  and  in  any  case  kept  workmen  in  the 
alabaster  quarry  of  Hatnub;  and  Ptolemaic  tradition 
also  made  him  the  builder  of  a  Hathor  temple  at  Den- 
dereh  (DD,  p.  15).  But  we  know  nothing  further  of  his 
great  and  prosperous  reign. 

101.  It  is  uncertain  whether  his  successor,  Khafre, 
was  his  son  or  not.  But  the  new  king's  name,  which 
means  "  His  Shining  is  Re,"  would  indicate  the  political 
influence  of  the  priests  of  Re  at  Heliopolis.  He  built 
a  pyramid  beside  that  of  Khufu,  but  it  is  somewhat 
smaller  and  distinctly  inferior  in  workmanship.  Scanty 
remains  of  the  pyramid-temple  on  the  east  side  are 
still  in  place,  from  which  the  usual  causeway  leads 
down  to  the  margin  of  the  plateau  and  terminates  in  a 
splendid  granite  building,  which  served  as  the  gateway 
to  the  causeway  and  the  pyramid  enclosure  above. 
This  imposing  entrance  stands  beside  the  Great  Sphinx, 
and  is  still  usually  termed  the  ''temple  of  the  sphinx,'* 
with  which  it  had,  however,  nothing  to  do.  Whether 
the  sphinx  itself  is  the  work  of  Khafre  is  not  yet  deter- 


THE  pyra:mid  builders 


111 


mined.  The  Great  Sphinx,  like  other  Egyptian 
-sphinxes,  is  the  portrait  of  a  Pharaoh,  and  an  obscure 
reference  to  Khafre  in  an  inscription  between  its  fore- 
paws,  dated  fourteen  hundred  years  later  in  the  reign 
of  Thutmose  IV,  perhaps  shows  that  in  those  times  he 
was  considered  to  have  had  something  to  do  with  it 
(BAR,  II,  815).  Beyond  these  buildings  we  know 
nothing  of  Khafre's  deeds,  but  these  show  clearly  that 
the  great  state  which  Khufu  had  done  so  much  to 
create  was  still  firmly  controlled  by  the  Pharaoh. 

102.  Under  Khafre's  successor,  INIenkure,  however, 
if  the  size  of  the  royal  pyramid  is  an  adequate  basis  for 
judgment,  the  power  of  the  royal  house  was  no  longer 
so  absolute.  The  third  pyramid  of  Gizeh,  which  we 
owe  to  him,  is  less  than  half  as  high  as  those  of  Khufu 
and  Khafre;  its  ruined  temple,  recently  excavated  by 
Reisner,  was  evidently  unfinished  at  his  death,  and  his 
successor  put  in  only  sun-dried  brick  instead  of  the 
granite  facing  it  was  intended  to  receive.  Besides  this, 
the  causeway,  still  submerged  in  sand,  and  three  small 
pyramids  of  ]\Ienkure's  family,  are  all  that  remains  of 
his  splendour.  Of  his  immediate  successors  we  pos- 
sess contemporary  monuments  only  from  the  reign  of 
Shepseskaf.  Although  we  have  a  record  that  he  se- 
lected the  site  for  his  pyramid  in  his  first  year  (BAR,  I, 
151),  he  was  unable  to  erect  a  monument  sufficiently 
large  and  durable  to  survive,  and  we  do  not  even  know 
where  it  was  located;  while  of  the  achievements  of 
this  whole  group  of  kings  at  the  close  of  the  Fourth 
Dynasty,  including  several  interlopers,  who  may  now 
have  assumed  the  throne  for  a  brief  time,  we  know 
nothing  whatever. 

103.  The  cause  of  the  fall  of  the  Fourth  Dynasty, 
while  not  clear  in  the  details,  is  in  the  main  outHnes 


112 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


tolerably  certain.  The  priests  of  Re  at  Heliopolis, 
whose  influence  is  also  evident  in  the  names  of  the  kings 
following  Khufu,  had  succeeded  in  organizing  their 
political  influence,  becoming  a  party  of  sufficient  power 
to  overthrow  the  old  line.  The  state  theology  had 
always  represented  the  king  as  the  successor  of  the  sun- 
god,  and  he  had  borne  the  title  "Horus,"  a  sun-god, 
from  the  beginning;  but  the  p  jsts  of  Heliopolis  now 
demanded  that  he  be  the  bodily  son  of  Re,  who  hence- 
forth would  appear  on  earth  to  become  the  father  of 
the  Pharaoh.  A  folk-tale  (PW),  of  w^hich  we  have  a 
copy,  some  nine  hundred  years  later  than  the  fall  of 
the  Fourth  Dynasty,  relates  how  Khufu,  while  enjoying 
an  idle  hour  w^ith  his  sons,  learned  from  an  ancient 
wiseman  that  the  three  children  soon  to  be  borne  by 
the  wife  of  a  certain  priest  of  Re  were  begotten  of  Re 
himself,  and  that  they  should  all  become  kings  of 
Egypt.  The  names  given  these  children  by  the  dis- 
guised divinities  who  assisted  at  their  birth  were: 
Userkaf,  Sahure  and  Kakai,  the  names  of  the  first  three 
kings  of  the  Fifth  Dynasty.  In  this  folk-tale  we  have 
the  popular  form  of  what  is  now  the  state  fiction :  every 
Pharaoh  is  the  bodily  son  of  the  sun-god,  a  belief  which 
was  thereafter  maintained  throughout  the  history  of 
Eg)T)t  (BAR,  II,  187-212). 

104.  The  kings  of  the  Fifth  Dynasty,  who  continued 
to  reside  in  the  vicinity  of  Memphis,  began  to  rule 
about  2750  b.  c.  They  show  plain  traces  of  the  origin 
ascribed  to  them  by  the  popular  tradition;  the  official 
name  which  they  assume  at  the  coronation  must  in- 
variably contain  the  name  of  Re.  Before  this  name 
must  now  be  placed  a  new^  title,  ''Son  of  Re."  Be- 
sides the  old  "Horus"  title  and  another  new  title 
representing  the   Horus-hawk  trampling   upon  the 


THE  PYRAMID  BUILDERS 


113 


symbol  of  Set,  this  new  designation  ^'Son  of  Re"  was 
the  fifth  title  peculiar  to  the  Pharaohs,  later  producing 
the  complete  Pharaonic  titulary  as  it  remained  through- 
out their  history.  Their  adherence  to  the  cult  of  Re 
as  the  state  religion  far  excellence  found  immediate 
and  practical  expression  in  the  most  splendid  form. 
By  the  royal  residence  near  later  Memphis  each  king 
erected  a  magnificent  temple  to  the  sun,  each  bearing  a 
name  like  "Favourite  Place  of  Re,"  or  "Satisfaction 
of  Re,"  and  having  in  place  of  a  holy  of  holies  at  the 
rear  an  enclosure  in  which  rose  a  tall  obelisk  exposed 
to  the  sky.  On  either  side  of  the  sanctuary  on  a  brick 
foundation  were  set  up  two  ships  representing  the  two 
celestial  barques  of  the  sun-god,  as  he  sailed  the  heavens 
morning  and  evening.  The  sanctuary  was  richly  en- 
dowed and  its  service  was  maintained  by  a  corps  of 
priests  (BAR,  I,  159,  8).  in  whose  titles  we  can  follow 
these  temples,  one  for  each  king,  at  least  into  the  reign 
of  Isesi,  the  eighth  monarch  of  the  line  (FE,  p.  13). 
Enjoying  wealth  and  distinction  such  as  had  been  pos- 
sessed by  no  official  god  of  earlier  times,  Re  gained  a 
position  of  influence  which  he  never  again  lost.  Through 
him  the  forms  of  the  Egyptian  state  began  to  pass  over 
into  the  world  of  the  gods,  and  the  myths  from  now  on 
were  dominated  and  strongly  coloured  by  him,  if  indeed 
some  of  them  did  not  owe  their  origin  to  the  exalted 
place  which  Re  now  occupied.  In  the  sun-myth  he 
became  king  of  Upper  and  Lower  Egypt  and,  like  a 
Pharaoh,  he  had  ruled  Egypt  with  Thoth  as  his  vizier. 

105.  The  change  in  the  royal  line  is  also  evident  in 
the  organization  of  the  government.  The  eldest  son 
of  the  king  is  no  longer  the  most  powerful  officer  in  the 
state,  but  the  position  which  he  held  in  the  Fourth 
Dynasty  as  vizier  and  chief  judge  is  now  the  preroga- 


114 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


tive  of  another  family,  with  whom  it  remains  hereditary. 
Each  incumbent,  through  five  generations,  bore  the 
name  Ptahhotep.  This  hereditary  succession,  so  strik- 
ing in  the  highest  office  of  the  central  government,  was 
now  common  in  the  nomes  also,  and  the  local  governors 
were  each  gaining  stronger  and  stronger  foothold  in 
his  nome  as  the  generations  passed,  and  son  succeeded 
father  in  the  same  nome  (BAR,  I,  213  fj.). 

106.  While  Userkaf,  as  the  founder  of  the  new 
dynasty,  may  have  had  enough  to  do  to  make  secure 
the  succession  of  his  line,  he  has  left  his  names  on  the 
rocks  at  the  first  cataract,  the  earliest  of  the  long  series 
of  rock-inscriptions  there,  which  from  now  on  will 
furnish  us  many  hints  of  the  career  of  the  Pharaohs  in 
the  south  (MMD,  54  e).  Sahure,  who  followed  User- 
kaf, continued  the  development  of  Egypt  as  the  earli- 
est known  naval  power  in  history.  He  dispatched  a 
fleet  against  the  Phoenician  coast,  and  a  relief  just 
discovered  in  his  pyramid-temple  at  Abusir  shows 
four  of  the  ships,  with  Phoenician  captives  among  the 
Egyptian  sailors.  This  is  the  earliest  surviving  rep- 
resentation of  sea-going  ships  (c.  2750  b.  c),  and  the 
oldest  known  picture  of  Semitic  Syrians.  Another 
fleet  was  sent  by  Sahure  to  still  remoter  waters,  on  a 
voyage  to  Punt,  the  Somali  coast  at  the  south  end 
of  the  Red  Sea,  and  along  the  south  side  of  the  gulf 
of  Aden.  From  this  region,  which,  like  the  whole 
east,  was  termed  the  "  God^s-Land,"  were  obtained 
the  fragrant  gums  and  resins  so  much  desired  for  the 
incense  and  ointments  indispensable  in  the  life  of  the 
Oriental.  Intercourse  with  this  country  had  been 
carried  on  for  centuries  (BAR,  II,  247),  but  Sahure 
was  the  first  Pharaoh  of  whom  the  monuments  record 
the  dispatch  of  a  special  expedition  thither.    This  ex- 


THE  PYRAJMID  BUILDERS 


115 


pedition  brought  back  80,000  measures  of  myrrh,  prob- 
ably 6,000  weight  of  electrum  (gold -silver  alloy),  be- 
sides 2,600  staves  of  some  costly  wood,  presumably 
ebony  (BAR,  I,  161,  8).  We  find  his  officials  at  the 
first  cataract  also,  one  of  whom  left  the  earliest  of  the 
long  series  of  inscriptions  on  the  rocks  there  (MCM, 
I,  88),  while  an  expedition  to  Sinai  returned  richly 
laden  (BAR,  I,  161,  7;  236). 

107.  We  can  only  discern  enough  of  the  next  four 
reigns  to  gain  faint  impressions  of  a  pow^erful  and 
cultured  state,  conserving  all  its  internal  wealth  and 
reaching  out  to  distant  regions  around  it  for  the  ma- 
terials which  its  o^STi  natural  resources  do  not  furnish. 
Toward  the  end  of  the  dynasty,  in  the  second  half  of 
iie  twenty-seventh  century  b.  c,  Isesi  opened  the 
quarries  of  the  Wadi  Hammamat  in  the  eastern  desert, 
tfiree  days'  journey  from  the  Nile,  and  two  days  from 
the  Red  Sea  port,  from  which  the  Isesi's  fleet  sailed  for 
Punt  on  the  second  voyage  thither  known  to  us  (BAR, 
I,  351,  353).  His  successor,  Unis,  must  have  been 
active  in  the  south,  for  we  find  his  name  at  the  frontier 
of  the  first  cataract,  followed  by  the  epithet  ''lord  of 
countries"  (PS.  xii,  No.  312). 

108.  Under  Isesi  we  perceive  more  clearly  the  rising 
power  of  the  officials,  who  from  now  on  never  fail  to 
make  themselves  increasingly  prominent  in  all  records 
of  the  royal  achievements  (BAR,  I,  264,  266).  It  is  a 
power  with  wnich  the  Pharaoh  will  find  more  and  more 
difficulty  in  dealing  as  time  passes.  There  is  now  per- 
haps another  evidence  of  declining  power  in  the  com- 
paratively diminutive  size  and  poorer  workmanship  of 
the  Fifth  Dynasty  pyramids,  ranged  along  the  desert 
margin  south  of  Gizeh,  at  Abusir  and  Sakkara.  The 
centralized  power  of  the  earlier  Pharaohs  was  thus 


116 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


visibly  weakening,  and  it  was  indeed  in  every  way 
desirable  that  there  should  be  a  reaction  against  the 
totally  abnormal  absorption  by  the  Pharaoh's  tomb  of 
such  a  large  proportion  of  the  national  wealth. 

109.  The  transitional  period  of  the  Fifth  Dynasty, 
lasting  probably  a  century  and  a  quarter,  during  which 
nine  kings  reigned,  was  therefore  one  of  significant 
political  development,  and  in  material  civilization  one 
of  distinct  progress.  Architecture  passed  from  the 
massive,  unadorned,  rectangular  granite  pillars  of  the 
Fourth  Dynasty  at  Gizeh  to  the  graceful  papyrus  and 
palm-crowned  columns  and  colonnades  of  the  sun-  and 
pyramid-temples  at  Abusir.  Art  thus  flourished  as 
before,  and  great  works  of  Egyptian  sculpture  were 
produced;  while  in  literature  Ptahhotep,  King  Isesi's 
vizier  and  chief  judge  composed  his  proverbial  wisdom, 
which  we  have  already  discussed.  The  state  religion 
received  a  form  worthy  of  so  great  a  nation,  the  temples 
throughout  the  land  enjoyed  constant  attention,  and 
the  larger  sanctuaries  were  given  endowments  com- 
mensurate with  the  more  elaborate  daily  offerings  on 
the  king's  behalf  (BAR,  I,  154-167).  It  is  this  pe- 
riod which  has  preserved  our  first  religious  literature  of 
any  extent,  as  well  as  our  earliest  lengthy  example  of 
the  Egyptian  language.  In  the  pyramid  of  Unis,  the 
last  king  of  the  dynasty,  is  recorded  the  collection  of 
mortuary  ritualistic  utterances,  the  so-called  Pyramid 
Texts  which  we  have  before  discussed  (p.  68).  As 
most  of  them  belong  to  a  still  earlier  age,  and  some  of 
them  originated  in  predynastic  times,  they  represent  a 
much  earlier  form  of  language  and  belief  than  those  of 
the  generation  to  which  the  pyramid  of  Unis  belongs. 


Vil 


THE  SIXTH  DYNASTY:   THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  OLE 
KINGDOM 

110.  In  the  fullest  of  the  roval  lists,  the  Turin  Papy- 
rus, there  is  no  indication  that  the  line  of  jNIenes  was  in- 
terrupted until  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Unis.  That  a 
new  dynasty  arose  at  this  point  there  can  be  no  doubt. 
As  the  reader  has  probably  already  perceived  (sect.  105), 
the  movement  which  brought  in  this  new  dynasty  was 
due  to  a  struggle  of  the  local  governors  for  a  larger 
degree  of  power  and  liberty.  The  establishment  of 
the  Fifth  Dynasty  by  the  influence  of  the  Heliopolitan 
party  had  given  them  the  opportunity  they  desired. 
They  gained  hereditary  hold  upon  their  offices,  and  the 
kings  of  that  family  had  never  been  able  to  regain  the 
complete  control  over  them  maintained  by  the  Fourth 
Dynasty.  Gradually  the  local  governors  had  then 
shaken  off  the  restraint  of  the  Pharaoh;  and  when 
about  2625  b.  c,  after  the  reign  of  Unis,  they  succeeded 
in  overthrowing  the  Fifth  Dynasty,  they  became  landed 
barons,  each  firmly  entrenched  in  his  nome,  or  city, 
and  maintaining  an  hereditary  claim  upon  it.  The  old 
title  of  ''local  governor'^  disappeared  as  a  matter  of 
course,  and  the  men  who  had  once  borne  it  now  called 
themselves  "great  chiefs  or  ''great  lord"  of  this  or 
that  nome.  They  continued  the  local  government  as 
before,  but  as  princes  with  a  large  degree  of  indepen- 


118 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


dence,  not  as  oflBcials  of  the  central  government.  We 
have  here  the  first  example  traceable  in  history  of  the 
dissolution  of  a  centralized  state  by  a  process  of  ag- 
grandizement on  the  part  of  local  officials  of  the  crown, 
like  that  which  resolved  the  Carlovingian  empire  into 
duchies,  landgraviates,  or  petty  principalities.  The  new 
lords  were  not  able  to  render  their  tenure  uncondition- 
ally hereditary,  but  here  the  monarch  still  maintained 
a  powerful  hold  upon  them;  for  at  the  death  of  a  noble 
his  position,  his  fief  and  his  title  must  be  conferred  upon 
the  inheriting  son  by  the  gracious  favour  of  the  Pha- 
raoh. These  nomarchs  or  "great  lords"  are  loyal  ad- 
herents of  the  Pharaoh,  executing  his  commissions  in 
distant  regions,  and  displaying  the  greatest  zeal  in  his 
cause;  but  they  are  no  longer  his  officials  merely;  nor 
are  they  so  attached  to  the  court  and  person  of  the 
monarch  as  to  build  their  tombs  around  his  pyramid. 
They  now  have  sufficient  independence  and  local  at- 
tachment to  erect  their  tombs  near  their  homes.  They 
devote  much  attention  to  the  development  and  pros- 
perity of  their  great  domains,  and  one  of  them  even 
tells  how  he  brought  in  emigrants  from  neighbouring 
nomes  to  settle  in  the  feebler  towns  and  infuse  new 
blood  into  the  less  productive  districts  of  his  own 
nome  (BAR,  I,  281). 

111.  The  chief  administrative  bond  which  united 
the  nomes  to  the  central  government  of  the  Pharaoh 
will  have  been  the  treasury  as  before;  but  the  Pharaoh 
found  it  necessary  to  exert  general  control  over  the 
great  group  of  fiefs  which  now  comprised  his  kingdom, 
and  already  toward  the  end  of  the  Fifth  Dynasty  he 
had  therefore  appointed  over  the  whole  of  the  vaUey 
above  the  Delta  a  governor  of  the  South,"  through 
wh^iii  he  vvas  able  constantly  to  exert  governmental 


THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  OLD  KINGDOM  119 


pressure  upon  the  southern  nobles;  there  seems  to 
have  been  no  corresponding  ''governor  of  the  North," 
and  we  may  infer  that  the  lords  of  the  North  were  less 
aggressive.  Moreover,  the  kings  still  feel  themselves  to 
be  kings  of  the  South  governing  the  North. 

112.  The  seat  of  government,  the  chief  royal  resi- 
dence, was,  as  before,  in  the  vicinity  of  Memphis,  still 
called  the  "^Miite  Wall";  but  after  the  obscure  reign 
of  Teti  II,  and  possibly  Userkere,  the  first  two  kings  of 
the  new  dynasty,  the  pyramid-city  of  his  successor,  the 
powerful  Pepi  I,  was  so  close  to  the  ''^Miite  Wall"  that 
the  name  of  his  pyramid,  ''^Nlen-nofer,"  corrupted  by 
the  Greeks  to  ^Memphis,  rapidly  passed  to  the  city,  and 
"^Miite  Wall"  survived  only  as  an  archaic  and  poetic 
designation  of  the  place.  The  administration  of  the 
residence  had  become  a  matter  of  sufficient  importance 
to  demand  the  attention  of  the  vizier  himself.  He 
henceforth  assumed  its  immediate  control,  receiving  the 
title  "governor  of  the  pyramid-city"  or  ''governor  of 
the  city "  merely,  for  it  now  became  customary  to  speak 
of  the  residence  as  the  "city."  Notwithstanding 
thorough-going  changes,  the  new^  dynasty  continued  the 
official  cult  maintained  by  their  predecessors.  Re 
remained  supreme,  and  the  old  foundations  were  re- 
spected. 

113.  In  spite  of  the  independence  of  the  new  nobles, 
it  is  evident  that  Pepi  I  possessed  the  necessary  force  to 
hold  them  well  in  hand.  His  monuments,  large  and 
small,  are  found  throughout  Egypt.  Now  began  also 
the  biographies  of  the  officials  of  the  time,  affording 
us  a  picture  of  the  busy  life  of  the  self-satisfied  magnates 
of  that  distant  age;  while  to  these  w^e  may  fortunately 
add  also  the  records  at  the  mines  and  in  the  quarries. 
Loyalty  now  demands  no  more  than  a  relief  showing 


120 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


the  king  as  he  worships  his  gods  or  smites  his  enemies; 
and  this  done,  the  vanity  of  the  commander  of  the  ex- 
pedition and  his  fellows  may  be  gratified  in  a  record  of 
their  deeds  or  adventures,  which  becomes  longer  and 
longer  as  time  passes.  In  the  quarries  of  Hammamat 
and  Hatnub,  as  well  as  in  Wady  Maghara  in  Sinai  the 
officials  of  Pepi  I  have  left  their  records  with  full  lists 
of  their  names  and  titles  (BAR,  I,  295-301;  304-305; 
302-303).  We  have  a  very  interesting  and  instructive 
example  of  this  official  class  under  the  new  regime  in 
Uni,  a  faithful  adherent  of  the  royal  house,  who  has 
fortunately  left  us  his  biography.  Under  king  Teti  II 
he  had  begun  his  career  at  the  bottom  as  an  obscure 
under-custodian  in  the  royal  domains.  Pepi  I  now 
appointed  him  as  a  judge,  at  the  same  time  giving  him 
rank  at  the  royal  court,  and  an  income  as  a  priest  of 
the  pyramid-temple.  He  was  soon  promoted  to  a 
superior  custodianship  of  the  royal  domains,  and  in 
this  capacity  he  had  so  gained  the  royal  favour  that 
when  a  conspiracy  against  the  king  arose  in  the  harem 
he  was  nominated  with  one  colleague  to  prosecute  the 
case.  Pepi  I  thus  strove  to  single  out  men  of  force 
and  ability  with  whom  he  might  organize  a  strong 
government,  closely  attached  to  his  fortunes  and  to 
those  of  his  house.  In  the  heart  of  the  southern 
country  he  set  up  among  the  nobles  the  "great  lord  of 
the  Hare-nome/'  and  made  him  governor  of  the  South; 
while  he  married  as  his  official  queens  the  two  sisters  of 
the  nomarch  of  Thinis,  both  bearing  the  same  name, 
Enekhnes-Merire,  and  they  became  the  mothers  of  the 
two  kings  who  followed  him  (BAR,  I,  294,  307,  310, 
344-349). 

114.  The  foreign  policy  of  Pepi  I  was  more  vigorous 
than  that  of  any  Pharaoh  of  earlier  times.    In  Nubia 


THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  OLD  KINGDOM  121 


he  gained  such  control  over  the  negro  tribes  that  they 
were  obHged  to  contribute  quotas  to  his  army  in  case  of 
war.  When  such  war  was  in  the  north,  where  safety 
permitted  these  negro  levies  were  freely  employed,  and 
in  Eg}^pt  they  formed  a  regular  contingent  of  gens- 
darmes  in  state  service  (AZ,  42,  1  ^.).  The  Beduin 
tribes  of  the  north,  having  become  too  bold  in  their  raid- 
ing of  the  eastern  Delta,  or  having  troubled  his  mining 
expeditions  in  Sinai,  Pepi  commissioned  Uni  to  collect 
such  an  army  among  the  negroes,  supplemented  by 
levies  throughout  Eg^'pt.  On  five  successive  punitive 
expeditions  Pepi  I  sent  him  against  the  tribes  of  this 
country;  while  a  sixth  carried  him  in  troop-ships  along 
the  coast  of  Palestine,  to  punish  the  Asiatics  as  far  north 
as  the  highlands  of  Palestine,  and  Phoenicia,  a  naval 
expedition  like  that  of  Sahure  some  two  centuries 
earlier  (sect.  106).  The  naive  account  of  these  wars 
left  by  Uni  in  his  biography  is  one  of  the  most  char- 
acteristic evidences  of  the  totally  unwarlike  spirit  of 
the  early  Eg^^ptian  (BAR,  I,  311-315). 

115.  Having  thus  firmly  established  his  family  at  the 
head  of  the  state,  the  fact  that  Pepi  I's  death,  after  a 
reign  of  probably  twenty  years,  left  his  son,  Memere, 
to  administer  the  kingdom  as  a  mere  youth,  seems  not 
in  the  least  to  have  shaken  its  fortunes.  Mernere  im- 
mediately appointed  Uni,  the  old  ser^-ant  of  his  house, 
as  governor  of  the  South,  under  whose  trusty  guidance 
all  went  well  (BAR,  I,  320).  The  powerful  nobles  of 
the  southern  frontier  were  also  zealous  in  their  support 
of  the  young  king.  They  were  a  family  of  bold  and 
adventurous  barons,  living  on  the  island  of  Elephantine, 
just  below  the  first  cataract.  The  valley  at  the  cataract 
was  now  called  the  ''Door  of  the  South,"  and  its  de- 
fense against  the  turbulent  tribes  of  northern  Nubia 


122 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


was  placed  in  their  hands,  so  that  the  head  of  the  family 
bore  the  title  "Keeper  of  the  Door  of  the  South/* 
They  made  the  place  so  safe  that  when  the  king  dis- 
patched Uni  to  the  granite  quarries  at  the  head  of  the 
cataract  to  procure  the  sarcophagus  and  the  finer 
fittings  for  his  pyramid,  the  noble  was  able  to  accom- 
plish his  errand  with  "only  one  war-ship,^'  an  unprece- 
dented feat  (BAR,  I,  322).  The  enterprising  young 
monarch  then  commissioned  Uni  to  establish  unbroken 
connection  by  water  with  the  granite  quarries  by  open- 
ing a  succession  of  five  canals  through  the  intervening 
granite  barriers  of  the  cataracts;  and  the  faithful  noble 
completed  this  difficult  task,  besides  the  building  of 
seven  boats,  launched  and  laden  with  great  blocks  of 
granite  for  the  royal  pyramid  in  only  one  year  (BAR, 
I,  324). 

116.  Now  that  the  first  cataract  was  passable  for 
Nile  boats  at  high  water,  a  closer  control,  if  not  the 
conquest  of  northern  Nubia  was  quite  feasible.  North- 
em  Nubia  was  not  of  itself  a  countr}^  which  the  agricul- 
tural Egyptian  could  utilize.  The  strip  of  cultivable 
soil  between  the  Nile  and  the  desert  on  either  hand  is 
here  so  scanty,  even  in  places  disappearing  altogether, 
that  its  agricultural  value  is  slight.  But  the  high  ridges 
and  valleys  in  the  desert  on  the  east  contain  rich  veins 
of  gold-bearing  quartz,  and  iron  ore  is  plentiful  also, 
although  no  workings  of  it  have  been  found  there.  The 
country  was  furthermore  the  only  gateway  to  the  regions 
of  the  south,  with  which  constant  trade  was  now  main- 
tained. Besides  gold,  the  Sudan  sent  down  the  river 
ostrich  feathers,  ebony  logs,  panther  skins  and  ivory; 
while  along  the  same  route,  from  Punt  and  the  coun- 
tries further  east,  came  myrrh,  fragrant  gums  and  resins 
and  aromatic  woods.    It  was  therefore  imperative  that 


THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  OLD  KINGDOM  123 


the  Pharaoh  should  command  this  route.  We  know 
httle  of  the  negro  and  negroid  tribes  who  inhabited  the 
cataract  region  at  this  time.  Immediately  south  of  the 
Egyptian  frontier  dwelt  the  tribes  of  Wawat,  extending 
well  toward  the  second  cataract,  above  which  the  entire 
region  of  the  upper  cataracts  was  known  as  Kush,  al- 
though the  name  does  not  commonly  occur  on  the 
monuments  until  the  Middle  Kingdom.  In  the  north- 
ern loop  of  the  huge  "S''  formed  by  the  course  of  the 
Nile  between  the  junction  of  the  two  Niles  and  the  sec- 
ond cataract,  was  included  the  territory  of  the  powerful 
Mazoi,  who  aften\'ard  appeared  as  auxiliaries  in  the 
Egyptian  army  in  such  numbers  that  the  Egyptian 
word  for  soldier  ultimately  became  ''Matoi,"  a  late 
(Coptic)  form  of  Mazoi.  In  this  northern  loop  of  the 
^'S"  too,  between  the  Third  and  the  Fourth  Cataracts, 
the  Nile  Valley  widens  into  broad  fields,  of  the  greatest 
productivity  and  enjoying  the  finest  climate.  But  the 
conquest  of  this  Nubian  paradise  by  the  Pharaohs  was 
still  a  thousand  years  away.  Probably  on  the  west  of 
the  Mazoi  was  the  land  of  Yam,  and  between  Yam  and 
Mazoi  on  the  south  and  Wawat  on  the  north  were  dis- 
tributed several  tribes,  of  whom  Irthet  and  Sethut  were 
the  most  important.  The  last  two,  together  with 
Wawat,  were  sometimes  united  under  one  chief  (BAR, 
I,  336).  All  these  tribes  were  still  in  the  barbarous 
stage.  They  dwelt  in  squalid  settlements  of  mud  huts 
along  the  river,  or  beside  wells  in  the  valleys  running 
up  country  from  the  Nile;  and  besides  the  flocks  and 
herds  which  they  maintained,  they  also  lived  upon  the 
scanty  produce  of  their  small  grain-fields. 

117.  Doubtless  utilizing  his  new  canal,  Mernere  now 
devoted  special  attention  to  the  exploitation  of  these 
regions.    His  power  was  so  respected  by  the  chiefs  of 


124 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


Wawat,  Irthet,  Mazoi  and  Yam  cJiat  they  furnished 
ftie  timber  for  the  heavy  cargo-boats  built  by  Uni  for 
the  granite  blocks  which  he  took  out  at  the  first  cata- 
ract. In  his  fifth  year  Mernere  did  what  no  Pharaoh 
before  him  had  ever  done,  in  so  far  as  we  are  informed. 
He  appeared  at  the  first  cataract  in  person  to  receive 
the  homage  of  the  southern  chiefs,  and  left  upon  the 
rocks  a  record  of  the  event,  accompanied  by  a  relief 
depicting  the  Pharaoh  leaning  upon  his  staff,  while  the 
Nubian  chiefs  bow  down  in  his  presence  (BAR,  I,  324, 
316-318). 

118.  Mernere  now  utilized  the  sen^ices  of  the  Ele- 
phantine nobles  in  tightening  his  hold  upon  the  southern 
chiefs.  Harkhuf,  who  was  then  lord  of  Elephantine, 
was  also  appointed  governor  of  the  South,  perhaps  as  the 
successor  of  Uni,  who  was  now  too  old  for  active  serivce, 
or  had  meantime  possibly  died  (BAR,  I,  332) ;  although 
the  title  had  now  become  a  mere  epithet  of  honour  worn 
by  more  than  one  deserving  noble  at  this  time.  It  was 
upon  Harkhuf  and  his  relatives,  a  family  of  daring 
and  adventurous  nobles,  that  the  Pharaoh  now  de- 
pended as  leaders  of  the  arduous  and  dangerous  expe- 
ditions which  should  intimidate  the  barbarians  on  his 
frontiers  and  maintain  his  prestige  and  his  trade  con- 
nections in  the  distant  regions  of  the  south.  These 
men  are  the  earliest  knowTi  explorers  of  inner  Africa 
and  the  southern  Red  Sea.  At  least  two  of  the  family 
perished  in  executing  the  Pharaoh's  hazardous  com- 
missions in  these  far-off  lands,  a  significant  hint  of  the 
hardships  and  perils  to  which  they  were  all  exposed. 
Besides  their  princely  titulary  as  lords  of  Elephantine 
they  all  bore  the  title  "caravan-conductor,  who  brings 
the  products  of  the  countries  to  his  lord,"  which  they 
proudly  display  upon  their  tombs,  excavated  high  in 


THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  OLD  KINGDOM  125 


the  front  of  the  cHffs  facing  modern  Assuan,  where  they 
still  look  down  upon  the  island  of  Elephantine,  the  one- 
time home  of  the  ancient  lords  who  occupy  them.  Here 
Harkhuf  has  recorded  how  Mernere  dispatched  him  on 
three  successive  expeditions  to  distant  Yam.  These 
dangerous  journeys  consumed  from  seven  to  eight 
months  each,  and  from  the  last  he  returned  with  the 
rich  proceeds  of  his  royal  trafficing  loaded  upon  three 
hundred  asses  (BAR,  I,  333-336). 

119.  These  operations  for  the  winning  of  the  extreme 
south  were  interrupted  by  the  untimely  death  of  Mer- 
nere. He  was  buried  behind  Memphis  in  the  granite 
sarcophagus  procured  for  him  by  Uni,  in  the  pyramid 
for  which  Uni  had  likewise  laboured  so  faithfully,  and 
here  his  remains  survived,  in  spite  of  vandals  and  tomb- 
robbers,  until  their  removal  to  the  museum  at  Gizeh  in 
1881 — the  oldest  royal  body,  interred  4,500  years  ago. 
As  Mernere  reigned  only  four  years  and  died  early  in 
his  fifth  year  without  issue,  the  succession  devolved 
upon  his  half-brother,  who,  although  only  a  child,  as- 
cended the  throne  as  Pepi  11.  His  accession  and  suc- 
cessful rule  speak  highly  for  the  stability  of  the  family, 
and  the  faithfulness  of  the  influential  nobles  attached 
to  it.  Pepi  n  was  the  son  of  Enekhnes-Merire,  one  of 
the  two  sisters  of  the  Thinite  nomarch,  whom  Pepi  I 
first  had  taken  as  his  queens.  Her  brother  Zau,  Pepi 
II's  uncle,  who  was  now  nomarch  of  Thinis,  was  ap- 
pointed by  the  child-king  as  vizier,  chief  judge  and 
governor  of  the  residence  city.  He  thus  had  charge  of 
the  state  during  his  royal  nephew's  minority,  and  as  far 
as  we  can  now  discern,  the  government  proceeded 
without  the  slightest  disturbance  (BAR,  I,  344-349). 

120.  Pepi  II,  or  in  the  beginning,  of  course,  his  min- 
isters, immediately  resumed  the  designs  of  the  royal 


126 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


house  in  the  south.  In  the  young  king's  second  year 
Harkhuf  was  for  the  fourth  time  dispatched  to  Yam, 
whence  he  returned  bringing  a  rich  pack  train  and  one 
of  those  uncouth,  bandy-legged  dwarfs  from  one  of  the 
pigmy  tribes  of  inner  Africa,  so  highly  prized  for  the 
dances  by  which  the  king's  leisure  hours  were  diverted. 
The  delighted  letter  of  thanks  written  by  the  child-king 
on  hearing  of  the  dwarf  was  recorded  by  the  gratified 
Harkhuf  on  the  front  of  his  tomb  and  thus  preserved 
(BAR,  I,  350-354). 

Not  all  of  these  hardy  lords  of  Elephantine,  who 
adventured  their  lives  in  the  tropical  fastnesses  of 
inner  Africa  in  the  twenty-sixth  century  before  Christ, 
were  as  fortunate  as  Harkhuf.  One  of  them,  a  gover- 
nor of  the  South,  named  Sebni,  suddenly  received  news 
of  the  death  of  his  father.  Prince  Mekliu,  who  perished 
while  on  an  expedition  south  of  Wawat.  Thereupon 
Sebni  undertook  the  dangerous  mission  of  recovering 
his  father's  remains.  Returning  in  safety,  he  was 
shown  every  mark  of  royal  favour  for  his  pious  deed 
in  rescuing  his  father's  body.  Splendid  gifts  and  the 
"gold  of  praise"  were  showered  upon  him,  and  later 
an  official  communication  from  the  vizier  conveyed  to 
him  a  parcel  of  land  (BAR,  I,  362-374). 

121.  A  loose  sovereignty  was  now  extended  over  the 
Nubian  tribes,  and  Pepinakht,  one  of  the  Elephantine 
lords,  was  placed  in  control  with  the  title  "governor 
of  foreign  countries."  In  this  capacity  Pepi  II  twice 
sent  him  against  Wawat  and  Irthet,  where  he  finally 
captured  the  two  chiefs  of  these  countries  themselves, 
besides  their  two  commanders  and  plentiful  spoil  from 
their  herds.  Expeditions  were  pushed  far  into  the 
upper  cataract  region,  which  is  once  called  Kush  in 
the  Elephantine  tombs,  and,  in  general,  the  preliminary 


THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  OLD  KINGDOM  127 


work  was  done  which  made  possible  the  complete  con- 
quest of  lower  Nubia  in  the  Middle  Kingdom.  Indeed 
that  conquest  would  now  have  been  begun  had  not 
internal  causes  produced  the  fall  of  the  Sixth  Dynasty 
(BAR,  I,  356,  358,  359,  361). 

122.  The  responsibility  for  the  development  of 
Egyptian  commerce  with  the  land  of  Punt  and  the 
region  of  the  southern  Red  Sea  also  fell  upon  the  lords 
of  Elephantine.  Evidently  they  had  charge  of  the 
whole  south  from  the  Red  Sea  to  the  Nile.  There  was 
no  waterway  connecting  the  Nile  with  the  Red  Sea 
(cf.  p.  159),  and  these  leaders  were  obliged  to  build  their 
ships  at  the  eastern  terminus  of  the  Coptos  caravan 
route  from  the  Nile,  in  one  of  the  Red  Sea  harbours 
like  Koser  or  Leucos  Limen.  WTiile  so  engaged, 
Enenkhet,  Pepi  IPs  na\'al  commander,  was  fallen  upon 
by  the  Beduin,  who  slew  him  and  his  entire  command. 
Pepinakht  was  immediately  dispatched  by  the  Pharaoh 
to  rescue  the  body  of  the  unfortunate  noble  (BAR,  I, 
360).  In  spite  of  these  risks,  the  communication  with 
Punt  was  now  active  and  frequent,  and  at  least  one 
man  had  made  the  voyage  probably  eleven  times  (BAR, 
I,  361).  It  will  be  seen  that  the  usually  accepted  seclu- 
sion of  the  Old  Kingdom  can  no  longer  be  maintained. 
The  commerce  of  the  Old  Kingdom  Pharaohs  extended 
from  the  gate  of  the  Indian  Ocean  on  the  south,  to  the 
forests  of  Lebanon,  and  the  pre-Mycensean  civilization 
of  the  Greek  islands  on  the  north.    (See  Note  xi.) 

123.  The  tradition  of  Manetho  states  that  Pepi  II 
was  six  years  old  when  he  began  to  reign,  and  that  he 
continued  until  the  hundredth  year,  doubtless  meaning 
of  his  life.  The  list  preserved  by  Eratosthenes  avers 
that  he  ruled  a  full  century.  The  Turin  Papyrus  of 
kings  supports  the  first  tradition,  giving  him  over 


128 


THE  OLD  KINGDOM 


ninety  years,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  its  truth. 
His  was  thus  the  longest  reign  in  history.  Several  brief 
reigns  followed,  among  them  possibly  that  of  the  Queen 
Nitocris,  to  whose  name  were  attached  the  absurdest 
legends. 

124.  But  after  the  death  of  Pepi  II  all  is  uncertain, 
and  impenetrable  obscurity  veils  the  last  days  of  the 
Sixth  Dynasty.  When  it  had  ruled  something  over  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years  the  power  of  the  landed  barons 
had  become  a  centrifugal  force,  which  the  Pharaohs 
could  no  longer  withstand,  and  the  dissolution  of  the 
state  resulted.  The  nomes  gained  their  independence, 
the  Old  Kingdom  fell  to  pieces,  and  for  a  time  was 
thus  resolved  into  the  petty  principalities  of  prehistoric 
times.  Nearly  a  thousand  years  of  unparalleled  de- 
velopment since  the  rise  of  a  united  state,  thus  ended, 
in  the  twenty-fifth  century  B.C.,  in  political  conditions 
like  those  which  had  preceded  it. 

125.  It  had  been  a  thousand  years  of  inexhaustible 
fertility  when  the  youthful  strength  of  a  people  of 
boundless  energy  had  for  the  first  time  found  the  or- 
ganized form  in  which  it  could  best  express  itself.  In 
every  direction  we  see  the  products  of  a  national  fresh- 
ness and  vigour  which  are  never  spent;  the  union  of 
the  country  under  a  single  guiding  hand  which  had 
q;uelled  internal  dissensions  and  directed  the  combined 
energies  of  a  great  people  toward  harmonious  effort^ 
had  brought  untold  blessing.  The  Pharaohs,  to  whom 
the  unparalleled  grandeur  of  this  age  was  due,  not  only 
gained  a  place  among  the  gods  in  their  own  time,  but 
two  thousand  years  later,  at  the  close  of  Egypt's  his- 
tory as  an  independent  nation,  in  the  Twenty-sixth 
Dynasty,  we  still  find  the  priests  who  were  appointed 
to  maintain  their  worship.    And  at  the  end  of  he' 


THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  OLD  KEsGDOM  129 


career,  when  the  nation  had  lost  all  that  youthful  elas- 
ticity and  creative  energy  which  so  abounded  in  the  Old 
Kingdom,  the  sole  effort  of  her  priests  and  wise  men 
was  to  restore  the  unsullied  religion,  life  and  govern- 
ment which  in  their  fond  imagination  had  existed  in 
the  Old  Kingdom,  as  they  looked  wistfully  back  upon  it 
across  the  millennia.  To  us  it  has  left  the  imposing 
line  of  temples,  tombs  and  pyramids,  stretching  for 
many  miles  along  the  margin  of  the  western  desert,  the 
most  eloquent  witnesses  to  the  fine  intelligence  and 
Titanic  energies  of  the  men  who  made  the  Old  Kingdom 
what  it  was;  not  alone  achieving  these  wonders  of 
mechanics  and  internal  organization,  but  building  the 
earliest  known  sea-going  ships  and  exploring  unknown 
waters,  or  pushing  their  commercial  enterprises  far  up 
the  Nile  into  inner  Africa.  In  plastic  art  they  had 
reached  the  highest  achievement;  in  architecture  their 
tireless  genius  had  created  the  column  and  originated 
the  colonnade;  in  government  they  had  elaborated  an 
enlightened  and  highly  developed  state,  with  a  large 
body  of  just  law;  in  religion  they  were  already  dimly 
conscious  of  a  judgment  in  the  hereafter,  and  they  w^re 
thus  the  first  men  whose  ethical  intuitions  made  happi- 
ness in  the  future  life  dependent  upon  character. 
Everywhere  their  unspent  energies  unfolded  in  a  rich 
and  manifold  culture  which  left  the  world  such  a  price- 
less heritage  as  no  nation  had  yet  bequeathed  it.  It 
now  remains  to  be  seen,  as  we  stand  at  the  close  of  this 
remarkable  age,  whether  the  conflict  of  local  with  cen- 
tralized authority  shall  exhaust  the  elemental  strength 
of  this  ancient  people;  or  whether  such  a  reconciliation 
can  be  effected  as  will  again  produce  harmony  and 
union,  permitting  the  continuance  of  the  marv^ellous 
development  of  which  we  have  witnessed  the  first  fruits. 


PART  m 

THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM: 
THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


vin 


THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  NORTH  AND  THE  RISE  OP 

THEBES 

126.  The  internal  struggle  which  caused  the  fall  of 
the  Old  Kingdom  developed  at  last  into  a  convulsion, 
in  which  the  destructive  forces  were  for  a  time  com- 
pletely triumphant.  Exactly  when  and  by  whom  the 
ruin  was  wrought  is  not  now  determinable^  but  the 
magnificent  mortuary  works  of  the  greatest  of  the  Old 
Kingdom  monarchs  fell  victims  to  a  carnival  of  destruc- 
tion in  which  many  of  them  were  annihilated.  The 
temples  were  not  merely  pillaged  and  violated,  but 
their  finest  works  of  art  were  subjected  to  systematic 
and  determined  vandalism,  which  shattered  the  splen- 
did granite  and  diorite  statues  of  the  kings  into  bits, 
or  hurled  them  into  the  well  in  the  monumental  gate 
of  the  pyramid-causeway.  Thus  the  foes  of  the  old 
regime  wreaked  vengeance  upon  those  who  had  repre- 
sented and  upheld  it.  The  nation  was  totally  disor- 
ganized. From  the  scanty  notes  of  Manetho  it  would 
appear  that  an  oligarchy,  possibly  representing  an  at- 
tempt of  the  nobles  to  set  up  their  joint  rule,  assumed 
control  for  a  brief  time  at  Memphis.  Manetho  calls 
them  the  Seventh  Dynasty.  He  follows  them  with  an 
Eighth  Dynasty  of  Memphite  kings,  who  are  but  the 
lingering  shadow  of  ancient  Memphite  power.  Their 
names  as  preserved  in  the  Abydos  list  show  that  they 


134  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


regarded  the  Sixth  Dynasty  as  their  ancestors;  but 
none  of  their  pyramids  has  ever  been  found,  nor  have 
we  been  able  to  date  any  tombs  of  the  local  nobility  in 
this  dark  age.  In  the  mines  and  quarries  of  Sinai  and 
Hammamat,  where  records  of  every  prosperous  line  of 
kings  proclaim  their  power,  not  a  trace  of  these  ephem- 
eral Pharaohs  can  be  found.  A  generation  after  the 
fall  of  the  Sixth  Dynasty  a  family  of  Heracleopolitan 
nomarchs  wrested  the  crown  from  the  weak  Mem- 
phites  of  the  Eighth  Dynasty,  who  may  have  lingered 
on,  claiming  royal  honours  for  nearly  another  century. 

127.  Some  degree  of  order  was  finally  restored  by 
the  triumph  of  the  nomarchs  of  Heracleopolis.  This 
city,  just  south  of  the  Fayum,  had  been  the  seat  of  a 
temple  and  cult  of  Horus  from  the  earliest  dynastic 
times.  Akhthoes,  who,  according  to  Manetho,  was  the 
founder  of  the  new  dynasty,  must  have  taken  grim 
vengeance  on  his  enemies,  for  all  that  Manetho  knows 
of  him  is  that  he  was  the  most  violent  of  all  the  kings  of 
the  time,  and  that,  having  been  seized  with  madness,  he 
was  slain  by  a  crocodile.  The  new  house  is  known 
to  Manetho  as  the  Ninth  and  Tenth  Dynasties,  but  its 
kings  were  still  too  feeble  to  leave  any  enduring  monu- 
ments; neither  have  any  records  contemporary  with 
the  family  survived  except  during  the  last  three  genera- 
tions, when  the  powerful  nomarchs  of  Siut  were  able  to 
excavate  cliff-tombs  in  which  they  fortunately  left 
records  of  the  active  and  successful  career  of  their 
family,  furnishing  us  a  hint  of  the  disorganized  state 
from  which  the  country  had  been  rescued  (BAR,  I, 
391-414). 

128.  These  Siut  nomarchs  enjoyed  the  most  intimate 
relations  with  the  royal  house  at  Heracleopolis,  and 
we  see  them  digging  canals,  reducing  taxation,  reaping 


THE  RISE  OF  THEBES 


135 


rich  harvests,  maintaining  large  herds,  while  there  were 
always  in  readiness  a  body  of  troops  and  a  fleet.  Such 
was  the  wealth  and  power  of  these  Siut  nobles  that 
they  soon  became  a  buffer  state  on  the  south  of  ines- 
timable value  to  the  house  of  Heracleopolis,  and  one 
of  them  was  made  military  "commander  of  Middle 
Egypt"  (BAR,  I,  410). 

129.  Meantime  among  the  nobles  of  the  South  a 
similar  powerful  family  of  nomarchs  was  slowly  rising 
into  notice.  Some  four  hundred  and  forty  miles  above 
Memphis,  and  less  than  one  hundred  and  forty  miles 
below  the  first  cataract,  along  the  stretch  of  Nile  about 
forty  miles  above  the  great  bend,  where  the  river  ap- 
proaches most  closely  to  the  Red  Sea  before  turning 
abruptly  away  from  it,  the  scanty  margin  between 
river  and  cliffs  expands  into  a  broad  and  fruitful  plain, 
in  the  midst  of  which  now  lie  the  mightiest  ruins  of 
ancient  civilization  to  be  found  anywhere  in  the  world. 
They  are  the  wreck  of  Thebes,  the  world^s  first  great 
monumental  city.  At  this  time  it  was  an  obscure 
provincial  town  and  the  neighbouring  Hermonthis 
was  the  seat  of  a  family  of  nomarchs,  the  Intefs  and 
Mentuhoteps.  Toward  the  close  of  the  Heracleopolitan 
supremacy,  Thebes  had  gained  the  lead  in  the  South, 
and  its  nomarch,  Intef,  was  "keeper  of  the  Door  of  the 
South."  His  successors  were  finally  able  to  detach  the 
whole  south  as  far  northward  as  his  own  Theban  nome, 
and  organized  an  independent  kingdom,  with  Thebes 
at  its  head.  This  Intef  was  ever  after  recognized  as 
the  ancestor  of  the  Theban  line,  and  the  monarchs  of 
the  Middle  Kingdom  set  up  his  statue  in  the  temple  at 
Thebes  among  those  of  their  royal  predecessors  who 
were  worshipped  there  (BAR,  I,  420,  419). 

130.  At  this  juncture,  the  unshaken  fidelity  of  the 


136  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


Siut  princes  was  the  salvation  of  the  house  of  Hera- 
cleopolis.  We  can  now  vaguely  discern  a  protracted 
struggle,  in  which  they  bore  the  brunt,  continuing  with 
varying  fortune,  as  the  Intefs  pushed  northward  from 
Thebes,  till  Wahenekh-Intef  gained  Abydos  and  fixed 
his  northern  boundary  there.  His  southern  frontier 
was  at  the  cataract.  His  son  and  successor,  another 
Intef,  maintained  this  southern  kingdom  till  the  acces- 
sion of  a  line  of  five  Mentuhoteps,  probably  a  col- 
lateral branch  of  the  Theban  family,  who  established 
the  universal  supremacy  of  Thebes,  and  the  sovereignty 
of  Egypt  passed  from  the  north  to  the  south.  Heracle- 
opolis  disappears,  after  we  have  gained  but  a  fleeting 
glimpse  of  her  kings  in  the  tombs  of  the  Siut  lords 
(BAR,  I,  396,  398,  403,  1.  23;  401).  We  then  find 
the  last  three  Mentuhoteps  controlling  all  Egypt,  and 
reviving  building  operations,  for  which  the  first  of 
them  (Nibtowere)  dispatched  a  great  expedition  to 
Hammamat  for  the  necessary  stone.  The  second 
(Nibhepetre)  erected  a  terraced  mortuary  temple 
against  the  cliffs  of  Der  el-Bahri,  now  the  oldest  sur- 
viving building  at  Thebes.  He  even  resumed  the  ab- 
sorption of  Nubia,  and  sent  a  fleet  against  Wawat. 
He  was  later  regarded  as  the  great  founder  of  the 
dynasty. 

131.  After  his  reign  of  half  a  century  Senekhkere- 
Mentuhotep  continued  to  hold  the  undivided  sover- 
eignty of  all  Egypt.  This  Mentuhotep  was  able  to 
resume  the  distant  foreign  enterprises  of  the  Pharaohs 
for  the  first  time  since  the  Sixth  Dynasty,  five  hundred 
years  before.  He  dispatched  his  chief  treasurer,  Henu, 
to  the  Red  Sea  by  the  Hammamat  road  with  a  follow- 
ing of  three  thousand  men.  Such  was  the  efficiency 
of  his  organization  that  each  man  received  two  jars 


THE  RISE  OF  THEBES 


137 


of  water  and  twenty  small  biscuit-like  loaves  daily, 
involving  the  issuance  of  six  thousand  jars  of  water 
and  sixty  thousand  such  loaves  by  the  commissary 
every  day  during  the  desert  march  and  the  stay  in 
the  quarries  of  Hammamat.  Everything  possible  was 
done  to  make  the  desert  route  thither  safe  and  pass- 
able. Henu  dug  fifteen  wells  and  cisterns,  and  set- 
tlements of  colonists  were  afterward  established  at 
the  watering  stations.  Arriving  at  the  Red  Sea  end 
of  the  route,  Henu  built  a  ship  which  he  dispatched 
to  Punt,  while  he  himself  returned  by  way  of  Ham- 
mamat, where  he  secured  and  brought  back  with 
him  fine  blocks  for  the  statues  in  the  royal  tem- 
ples. In  such  efficient  organization  we  discern  slowly 
emerging  from  centuries  of  anarchy  and  civil  strife  the 
great  state  which  we  shall  soon  meet  as  the  Middle 
Kingdom.  After  a  rule  of  a  little  over  one  hundred 
and  sixty  years  the  Eleventh  Dynasty  was  brought  to  a 
close  with  the  reign  of  Senekhkere-Mentuhotep,  about 
2000  B.  c.  They  left  few  monuments;  their  modest 
pyramids  of  sun-dried  brick  on  the  western  plain  of 
Thebes  w^ere  in  a  perfect  state  of  preservation  a  thou- 
sand years  later,  but  they  barely  survived  into  modern 
times,  and  their  vanishing  remains  were  excavated  by 
Mariette  (Note  I;  BAR,  I,  419-^59;  iv,  514). 

132.  It  was  not  without  hostilities  that  the  last  Men- 
tuhotep  gave  w^ay  before  the  new  line.  With  the 
advent  of  its  founder,  the  unknown  Theban,  Amenem- 
het,  w^e  hear  of  a  campaign  on  the  Nile  with  a  fleet  of 
twenty  ships  of  cedar,  followed  by  the  expulsion  of 
some  unknown  enemy  from  Eg\^t.  The  development 
of  local  power  among  the  landed  nobility  which  had 
become  so  evident  in  the  Fifth  Dynasty  had  now 
reached  its  logical  issue;  Amenemhet  could  only  ac- 


138  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


cept  the  situation  and  deal  with  it  as  best  he  might. 
He  now  achieved  the  conquest  of  the  country  and  its 
reorganization  only  by  skilfully  employing  in  his  cause 
those  noble  families  whom  he  could  win  by  favour  and 
fair  promises.  We  see  him  rewarding  Khnumhotep, 
one  of  his  noble  partisans,  with  the  gift  of  the  Oryx- 
nome,  and  personally  going  about  determining  the  just 
boundaries  and  erecting  landmarks.  To  suppress 
these  landed  barons  entirely  was  impossible.  The  ut- 
most that  the  monarch  could  now  accomplish  was  the 
appointment  in  the  nomes  of  nobles  favourably  in- 
clined toward  his  house.  The  state  which  the  un- 
precedented vigour  and  skill  of  this  great  statesman 
finally  succeeded  in  thus  erecting,  again  furnished 
Egypt  with  the  stable  organization  which  enabled  her 
about  2000  b.  c.  to  enter  upon  her  second  great  period 
of  productive  development,  the  Middle  Kingdom  (BAR, 
I,  465,  688  /.,  625,  619-639). 


IX 


THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM  OR  THE  FEUDAL  AGE:  STATE, 
SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION 

133.  It  had  been  but  natural  that  the  kings  of  the 
Eleventh  Dynasty  should  reside  at  Thebes,  where  the 
founders  of  the  family  had  lived  during  the  long  war 
for  the  conquest  of  the  North.  But  Amenemhet  was 
evidently  unable  to  continue  this  tradition.  All  the 
kings  of  Egypt,  since  the  passing  of  the  Thinites  a 
thousand  years  before,  had  lived  in  the  North,  except 
the  Eleventh  Dynasty  which  he  had  supplanted.  The 
spot  which  he  selected  was  on  the  w^est  side  of  the 
river  some  miles  south  of  IMemphis,  near  the  place 
now  called  Lisht,  where  the  ruined  pyramid  of  Amen- 
emhet has  been  discovered.  From  this  stronghold, 
bearing  the  significant  name  Ithtowe,  "Captor  of  the 
Two  Lands,"  Amenemhet  swayed  the  destinies  of  a 
state  which  required  all  the  skill  and  political  sagacity 
of  a  line  of  unusually  strong  rulers  in  order  to  maintain 
the  prestige  of  the  royal  house. 

The  nation  was  made  up  of  an  aggregation  of  small 
states  or  petty  princedoms,  the  lords  of  which  owed  the 
Pharaoh  their  loyalty,  but  they  were  not  his  officials 
or  his  servants.  Some  of  these  local  nobles  were 
"great  lords''  or  nomarchs,  ruling  a  whole  nome; 
others  were  only  "counts"  of  a  smaller  domain  with  its 
fortified  town.    It  was  thus  a  feudal  state,  not  essen- 

139 


140   THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


tially  different  from  that  of  later  Europe,  which  Amen- 
emhet  had  organized.  We  are  dependent  for  our 
knowledge  of  these  barons  upon  their  surviving  tombs 
and  mortuary  monuments.  All  such  remains  in  the 
Delta  have  perished,  so  that  we  can  speak  with  cer- 
tainty only  of  the  conditions  in  the  South,  and  even 
here  it  is  only  in  Middle  Egypt  that  we  are  adequately 
informed. 

134.  Through  long  generations  of  possession  the 
nomarch  had  now  become  a  miniature  Pharaoh  in  his 
little  realm.  On  a  less  sumptuous  scale  his  residence 
was  surrounded  by  a  personnel  not  unlike  that  of  the 
Pharaonic  court  and  harem;  while  his  government 
demanded  a  chief  treasurer,  a  court  of  justice,  with 
offices,  scribes,  and  functionaries,  and  all  the  essential 
machinery  of  government  which  we  find  at  the  royal 
residence.  The  nomarch  collected  the  revenues  of  his 
domain,  was  high  priest  or  head  of  the  sacerdotal 
organization,  and  commanded  the  militia  of  his  realm 
which  was  permanently  organized.  His  power  was 
thus  considerable.  Such  lords  were  able  to  build 
temples,  erect  public  buildings,  and  set  up  massive  and 
pretentious  monuments  in  their  principal  towns  (BAR, 
I,  520  /.;  466,  note  c;  694-706,  403,  637  and  note  a.) 
The  nomarch  devoted  himself  to  the  interests  of  his 
people,  and  was  concerned  to  leave  to  posterity  a 
reputation  as  a  merciful  and  beneficent  ruler.  After 
making  all  due  allowance  for  a  natural  desire  to  record 
the  most  favourable  aspects  of  his  government,  it  is  evi- 
dent that  the  paternal  character  of  the  nomarch's  local 
and  personal  rule,  in  a  community  of  limited  numbers, 
with  which  he  was  acquainted  by  almost  daily  contact, 
had  proved  an  untold  blessing  to  the  country  and 
population  at  large  (BAR,  I,  638,  408,  407,  459,  523). 


STATE,  SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION 


141 


135.  The  domains  over  which  the  nomarch  thus 
ruled  were  not  all  his  unqualified  possessions.  His 
wealth  consisted  of  lands  and  revenues  of  two  classes: 
the  '^paternal  estate/'  received  from  his  ancestors  and 
entailed  in  his  line;  and  the  ''count's  estate"  (BAR, 
I,  536),  over  which  the  dead  hand  had  no  control;  it 
was  conveyed  as  a  fief  by  the  Pharaoh  anew  at  the 
nomarch's  death.  It  was  this  fact  which  to  some  ex- 
tent enabled  the  Pharaoh  to  control  the  feudatories  and 
to  secure  the  appointment  of  partisans  of  his  house 
throughout  the  country.  Nevertheless  he  could  not 
ignore  the  natural  line  of  succession,  which  was  through 
the  eldest  daughter;  and  she  might  even  rule  the 
domain  after  the  death  of  her  father  until  her  son 
was  old  enough  to  assume  its  government  (BAR,  I, 
414).  The  history  of  the  lords  of  Benihasan  through 
four  generations,  which  their  tomb  records,  enable  us  to 
follow,  shows  that  the  Pharaoh  could  not  overlook 
the  claims  of  the  heir  of  a  powerful  family,  and  the 
deference  which  he  showed  them  evidently  limited 
the  control  which  he  might  exert  over  a  less  formidable 
dynasty  of  nobles  (BAR,  I,  619  jj.). 

136.  To  what  extent  these  lords  felt  the  restraint  of 
the  royal  hand  in  their  government  and  administration 
it  is  not  now  possible  to  determine.  A  royal  commis- 
sioner, whose  duty  it  was  to  look  to  the  interests  of  the 
Pharaoh,  seems  to  have  resided  in  the  nome,  and  there 
were  ''overseers  of  the  crown-possessions"  (probably 
under  him),  in  charge  of  the  royal  herds  in  each  nome; 
but  the  nomarch  himself  was  the  medium  through 
whom  all  revenues  from  the  nome  were  conveyed  to 
the  treasury  (BAR,  I,  522).  "All  the  imposts  of  the 
king's  house  passed  through  my  hand,"  says  Ameni  of 
the  Oryx  nome.    The  treasury  was  the  organ  of  the 


142  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


central  government,  which  gave  administrative  cohe- 
sion to  the  otherwise  loose  aggregation  of  nomarchies. 
It  had  its  income-paying  property  in  all  the  nomes. 
Some  of  this  property  was  administered  by  government 
overseers,  while  to  a  large  extent  it  was  entrusted  to 
the  noble,  probably  as  part  of  the  "count's  estate" 
(BAR,  I,  522,  and  note  a).  We  have  no  means  of  even 
conjecturing  the  amount  or  proportion  of  property 
held  by  the  crown  in  the  nomes  and  ''count's  estates," 
but  it  is  evident  that  the  claims  of  these  powerful  feu- 
datories must  have  seriously  curtailed  the  traditional 
revenues  of  the  Pharaoh.  He  no  longer  had  the  re- 
sources of  the  country  at  his  unconditional  disposal  as 
in  the  Old  Kingdom.  Other  resources  of  the  treasury 
were,  however,  now  available,  and,  if  not  entirely  new, 
were  henceforth  more  energetically  exploited.  Besides 
his  internal  revenues,  including  the  tribute  of  the  nomes 
and  the  Residence,  the  Pharaoh  received  a  regular 
income  from  the  gold-mines  of  Nubia,  and  those  on 
the  Coptos  road  to  the  Red  Sea.  The  traffic  with  Punt 
and  the  southern  coasts  of  the  Red  Sea  seems  to  have 
been  the  exclusive  prerogative  of  the  crown,  and  must 
have  brought  in  a  considerable  return;  while  the  mines 
and  quarries  of  Sinai,  and  perhaps  also  the  quarries  of 
Hammamat,  had  also  been  developed  as  a  regular 
source  of  profit.  The  conquest  of  lower  Nubia,  and 
now  and  then  a  plundering  expedition  into  Syria- 
Palestine,  also  furnished  not  unwelcome  contributions 
to  the  treasury. 

137.  The  central  organization  and  the  chief  func- 
tionaries of  the  treasury  were  the  same  as  in  the  Old 
Kingdom,  and  the  vigorous  administration  of  the  time 
is  evident  in  the  frequent  records  of  these  active  officials, 
showing  that  notwithstanding  their  rank,  they  often 


STATE,  SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION 


143 


personally  superintended  the  king's  interests  in  Sinai, 
Hammamat,  or  on  the  shores  of  the  Red  Sea  at  the 
terminus  of  the  Coptos  road.  It  is  evident,  however, 
that  the  treasury  had  become  a  more  highly  developed 
organ  since  the  Old  Kingdom.  The  army  of  subor- 
dinates, stewards,  overseers  and  scribes  filling  the 
offices  under  the  heads  of  sub-departments  was  obvi- 
ously larger  than  before.  They  began  to  display  an 
array  of  titles,  of  which  many  successive  ranks,  here- 
tofore unknown,  were  being  gradually  differentiated. 
Such  condition  made  possible  the  rise  of  an  official 
middle  class. 

138.  Justice,  as  in  the  Old  Kingdom,  was  still  dis- 
pensed by  the  administrative  officials  (BAR,  I,  618). 
The  six  "  Great  Houses,"  or  courts  of  justice,  with  the 
vizier  at  their  head,  sat  in  Ithtowe  (SEI,  I,  100).  There 
was,  besides,  a  "House  of  Thirty,"  which  evidently  pos- 
sessed judicial  functions,  and  was  also  presided  over 
by  the  vizier,  but  its  relation  to  the  six  "  Great  Houses" 
is  not  clear.  There  was  now  more  than  one  "  Southern 
Ten,"  and  "Magnates  of  the  Southern  Tens"  were 
frequently  entrusted  with  various  executive  and  ad- 
ministrative commissions  by  the  king.  The  law  which 
they  administered,  while  it  has  not  survived,  had  cer- 
tainly attained  a  high  devlopment,  and  w^as  capable  of 
the  finest  distinctions.  A  nomarch  at  Siut  makes  a 
contract  between  himself  as  count,  and  himself  as  high 
priest  in  the  temple  of  his  city,  showing  the  closest 
differentiation  of  the  rights  which  he  possessed  in  these 
two  different  capacities  (BAR,  I,  568  JJ.). 

139.  The  scanty  records  of  the  time  throw  but  little 
light  upon  the  other  organs  of  government,  like  the 
administration  of  lands,  the  system  of  irrigation  and 
the  like.    The  country  was  divided  into  two  adminis- 


144   THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


trative  districts  of  the  South  and  the  North,  and  the 
"Magnates  of  the  Southern  Tens"  served  in  both  dis- 
tricts, showing  that  they  were  not  confined  to  the  South 
alone.  The  oflBce  of  the  governor  of  the  South  had 
disappeared,  and  already  before  the  close  of  the  Old 
Kingdom  the  title  had  become  merely  an  honourable 
predicate,  if  used  at  all.  An  elaborate  system  of 
registration  was  in  force.  Every  head  of  a  family  was 
enrolled  as  soon  as  he  had  established  an  independent 
household,  with  all  the  members  belonging  to  it,  in- 
cluding serfs  and  slaves  (GKP,  pi.  ix,  /.,  pp.  19-29). 
The  office  of  the  vizier  was  the  central  archives  of  the 
government  as  before,  and  all  records  of  the  land- 
administration  with  census  and  tax  registration  were 
filed  in  his  bureaus.  His  powers  were  the  same  as  in 
the  Old  Kingdom,  and  that  he  might  prove  dangerous 
to  the  crown  is  evident  in  the  history  of  Amenemhet's  I 
probable  rise  from  the  viziership. 

140.  It  was  therefore  now  more  necessary  than  ever 
that  the  machinery  of  government  should  be  in  the 
hands  of  men  of  unquestioned  loyalty.  Young  men 
were  brought  up  in  the  circle  of  the  king's  house  that 
they  might  grow  up  in  attachment  to  it.  Discreet 
conduct  toward  the  Pharaoh  was  the  condition  of  a 
career,  and  the  wise  praise  him  who  knows  how  to  be 
silent  in  the  king's  service  (BAR,  I,  665,  514,  532, 
748). 

141.  Under  such  conditions  the  Pharaoh  could  not 
but  surround  himself  with  the  necessary  power  to 
enforce  his  will  when  obliged  to  do  so.  A  class  of 
military  "attendants,"  or,  literally,  "followers  of  his 
majesty"  therefore  arose,  the  first  professional  soldiers 
of  whom  we  have  any  knowledge  in  ancient  Egypt.  In 
companies  of  a  hundred  men  each  they  garrisoned  the 


STATE,  SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION  145 


palace  and  the  strongholds  of  the  royal  house  from 
Nubia  to  the  Asiatic  frontier.  They  formed  at  least 
the  nucleus  of  a  standing  army,  although  it  is  evident 
that  they  were  not  as  yet  in  sufficient  numbers  to  be 
dignified  by  this  term.  They  were  probably  of  the 
same  social  class  as  the  feudatory  militia,  forming  the 
great  mass  of  the  army  employed  by  the  Pharaoh  at 
this  time.  This  feudatory  militia  was  composed  of 
the  free  born  citizens  of  the  middle  class  on  the  estate 
of  the  nomarch,  who  at  the  king's  summons  placed 
himself  at  their  head  and  led  them  in  the  wars  of  his 
liege-lord.  The  army  in  time  of  war  was  therefore 
made  up  of  contingents  furnished  and  commanded  by 
the  feudatories.  In  peace  they  were  also  frequently 
drawn  upon  to  furnish  the  intelligent  power  applied 
to  the  transportation  of  great  monuments  or  employed 
in  the  execution  of  public  works.  All  free  citizens, 
whether  priests  or  not,  were  organized  and  enrolled  in 
"generations,''  a  term  designating  the  different  classes 
of  youth,  who  were  to  become  successively  liable  to 
draught  for  military  or  public  service.  As  in  the  Old 
Kingdom,  war  continues  to  be  little  more  than  a  series 
of  loosely  organized  predatory  expeditions,  the  rec- 
ords of  which  clearly  display  the  still  unwarlike  char- 
acter of  the  Egyptian. 

142.  The  detachment  of  the  nobles  from  the  court 
since  the  Sixth  Dynasty  had  resulted  in  the  rise  of  a 
provincial  society,  of  which  we  gain  glimpses  especially 
at  Elephantine,  Bersheh,  Benihasan  and  Siut,  where 
the  tombs  of  the  nomarchs  are  still  preserved,  and  at 
Abydos,  where  all  other  classes  now  desired  to  be 
buried  or  to  erect  a  memorial  stone.  The  life  of  the 
nobles  therefore  no  longer  centred  in  the  court,  and  the 
aristocracy  of  the  time,  being  scattered  throughout  the 


146  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


country,  took  on  local  forms.  The  nomarch,  with  his 
large  family  circle,  his  social  pleasures,  his  hunting  and 
his  sports,  is  an  interesting  and  picturesque  figure  of 
the  country  nobleman,  with  whom  we  would  gladly 
tarry  if  space  permitted.  Characteristic  of  this  age  is 
the  prominence  of  the  middle  class.  To  some  extent 
this  prominence  is  due  to  the  fact  that  a  tomb,  a  tomb- 
stone and  mortuary  equipment  have  become  a  neces- 
sity also  for  a  large  proportion  of  this  class,  who  felt  no 
such  necessity  and  left  no  such  memorial  of  their 
existence  in  the  Old  Kingdom.  In  the  cemetery  at 
Abydos,  among  nearly  eight  hundred  men  of  the  time 
having  tombstones  there,  one  in  four  bore  no  title 
either  of  office  or  of  rank  (CC,  Nos.  20001-20780). 
Some  of  these  men  were  tradesmen,  some  land-owners, 
others  artisans  and  artificers;  but  among  them  were 
men  of  wealth  and  luxury.  In  the  Art  Institute  at 
Chicago  there  is  a  fine  coffin  belonging  to  such  an  un- 
titled citizen,  which  he  had  made  of  costly  cedar  im- 
ported from  Lebanon.  Of  the  people  bearing  titles  of 
office  on  these  Middle  Kingdom  tombstones  of  Abydos 
the  vast  majority  were  small  office-holders,  displaying 
no  title  of  rank  and  undoubtedly  belonging  to  this 
same  middle  class.  The  government  service  now 
offered  a  career  to  the  youth  of  this  station  in  life. 
The  inheritance  by  the  son  of  his  father's  office,  already 
not  uncommon  in  the  Old  Kingdom,  was  now  general. 
Such  a  custom  must  necessarily  lead  to  the  formation 
of  an  official  middle  class.  Their  ability  to  read  and 
write  also  raised  them  above  those  of  their  own  social 
station  who  were  illiterate,  and  from  this  time  on  we 
shall  find  the  scribe  constantly  glorying  in  his  knowledge 
and  despising  all  other  callings  (P  Sail.,  II).  For  the 
first  time  therefore  we  now  discern  a  prosperous  and 


STATE,  SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION  147 


often  well-to-do  middle  class  in  the  provinces,  some- 
times owning  their  own  slaves  and  lands  and  bringing 
their  offerings  of  first  fruits  to  the  temple  of  the  town 
as  did  the  nomarch  himself  (BAR,  I,  536).  At  the 
bottom  of  the  social  scale  were  the  unnamed  serfs,  the 
toiling  millions  who  produced  the  agricultural  wealth 
of  the  land — the  despised  class  whose  labour  neverthe- 
less formed  the  basis  of  the  economic  life  of  the  nation. 
In  the  nomes  they  were  also  taught  handicrafts,  and  we 
see  them  depicted  in  the  tombs  at  Benihasan  and  else- 
where engaged  in  the  production  of  all  sorts  of  handi- 
work. AVhether  their  output  was  solely  for  the  use  of 
the  nomarch's  estates  or  also  on  a  large  scale  for  traflBc 
in  the  markets  with  the  middle  class  throughout  the 
country,  is  entirely  uncertain. 

143.  In  no  element  of  their  life  are  there  clearer  evi- 
dences of  change  and  development  than  in  the  religion 
of  the  Middle  Kingdom  Egyptians.  Here  again  we  are 
in  a  new  age.  The  ofiicial  supremacy  of  Re,  so  marked 
since  the  rise  of  the  Fifth  Dynasty,  w^as  now  complete. 
The  other  priesthoods,  desirous  of  securing  for  their 
own,  perhaps  purely  local  deity,  a  share  of  the  sun- 
god's  glory,  gradually  discovered  that  their  god  was 
but  a  form  and  name  of  Re;  and  some  of  them  went 
so  far  that  their  theologizing  found  practical  expres- 
sion in  the  god's  name.  Thus,  for  example,  Amon, 
hitherto  an  obscure  local  god  of  Thebes,  who  had  at- 
tained some  prominence  by  the  political  rise  of  the  city, 
was  from  now  on  a  solar-god,  and  was  commonly  called 
by  his  priests  Amon-Re.  There  were  in  this  move- 
ment the  beginnings  of  a  tendency  toward  a  pantheistic 
solar  monotheism,  which  we  shall  yet  trace  to  its  re- 
markable culmination.  While  the  temples  had  prob- 
ably somewhat  increased  in  size,  the  official  cult  was 


148  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


not  materially  altered,  and  there  was  still  no  large 
class  of  priests  (AZ,  1900,  94). 

144.  The  triumph  of  Re  was  largely  due  to  his  po- 
litical prominence;  but  that  of  Osiris,  which  is  now 
equally  evident,  had  no  connection  with  the  state,  but 
was  a  purely  popular  victory.  That  his  priests  con- 
tributed to  his  triumph  by  persistent  propaganda  is 
nevertheless  probable,  but  their  field  of  operations  will 
have  been  among  the  people.  At  Abydos  the  Osiris- 
myth  was  wrought  into  a  series  of  dramatical  presenta- 
tions in  which  the  chief  incidents  of  the  god's  life, 
death  and  final  triumph  were  annually  enacted  before 
the  people  by  the  priests.  Indeed  in  the  presentation 
of  some  portions  of  it  the  people  were  permitted  to 
participate;  and  this  ancient  passion  play  was  un- 
questionably as  impressive  in  the  eyes  of  the  multitude 
as  were  the  miracle  and  passion  plays  of  the  Christian 
age  (BAR,  I,  662,  669;  SU,  ix,  2).  Among  the  inci- 
dents enacted  was  the  procession  bearing  the  god's 
body  to  his  tomb  for  burial,  a  custom  which  finally 
resulted  in  identifying  as  the  original  tomb  of  Osiris 
the  place  on  the  desert  behind  Abydos,  which  in  this 
scene  served  as  the  tomb.  Thus  the  tomb  of  King  Zer 
of  the  First  Dynasty,  who  had  ruled  over  a  thousand 
years  before,  was  in  the  Middle  Kingdom  already  re- 
garded as  that  of  Osiris  (ibid.).  As  veneration  for  the 
spot  increased,  it  became  a  veritable  holy  sepulchre, 
and  Abydos  gained  a  sanctity  possessed  by  no  other 
place  in  Egypt.  All  this  wrought  powerfully  upon  the 
people;  they  came  in  pilgrimage  to  the  place,  and  the 
ancient  tomb  of  Zer  was  buried  deep  beneath  a  moun- 
tain of  jars  containing  the  votive  offerings  which  they 
brought.  If  possible  the  Egyptian  was  now  buried  at 
Abydos;  from  the  vizier  himself  down  to  the  humblest 


STATE,  SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION  149 


cobbler  we  find  tneni  crowding  this  most  sacred  ceme- 
tery of  Egypt.  But  the  masses  to  whom  this  was  im- 
possible erected  memorial  tablets  and  small  false  or 
model  tombs  there  for  themselves  and  their  relatives, 
calling  upon  the  god  in  prayer  and  praise  to  remember 
them  in  the  hereafter.  Royal  oflScials  and  emissaries 
of  the  government,  whose  business  brought  them  to  the 
city,  failed  not  to  improve  the  opportunity  to  erect  such 
a  tablet,  and  the  date  and  character  of  their  commis- 
sions which  they  sometimes  add  furnish  us  with  in- 
valuable historical  facts,  of  which  we  should  otherwise 
never  have  gained  any  knowledge  (BAR,  1,  671-672). 

145.  As  the  destiny  of  the  dead  became  more  and 
more  identified  with  that  of  Osiris,  the  judgment  which 
he  had  been  obliged  to  undergo  was  supposed  to  await 
also  all  who  departed  to  his  realms.  The  heart  of  the 
deceased  is  weighed  over  against  a  feather,  the  symbol 
of  truth,  while  he  pleads  *'not  guilty"  to  forty-two 
different  sins.  These  sins  are  such  as  to  show  that  the 
ethical  standard  was  high;  moreover  in  this  judgment 
the  Egyptian  introduced  for  the  first  time  in  the  history 
of  man  the  fully  developed  idea  that  the  future  destiny 
of  the  dead  must  be  dependent  entirely  upon  the  ethical 
quality  of  the  earthly  life,  the  idea  of  future  account- 
ability, of  which  we  found  the  first  traces  in  the  Old 
Kingdom.  The  whole  conception  is  notable;  for  a 
thousand  years  or  more  after  this  no  such  idea  was 
known  among  other  peoples,  and  in  Babylonia  and 
Israel  good  and  bad  alike  descended  together  at  death 
into  gloomy  Sheol,  where  no  distinction  was  made  be- 
tween them.  The  blessed  dead,  who  successfully  sus- 
tained the  judgment  each  received  the  predicate  "true 
of  speech,'^  a  term  which  was  interpreted  as  meaning 
"triumphant,"  and  from  now  on  so  employed  Every 


150   THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


deceased  person,  when  spoken  of  by  the  Hving,  received 
this  predicate;  it  was  always  written  after  the  names 
of  the  dead,  and  finally  also  after  those  of  the  living  in 
anticipation  of  their  happy  destiny. 

146.  In  one  important  respect  the  beliefs  of  the 
Egyptian  regarding  his  future  state  have  suffered  a 
striking  change.  He  is  now  beset  with  innumerable 
dangers  in  the  next  world.  Besides  the  serpents  com- 
mon in  the  Pyramid  Texts,  the  most  uncanny  foes  and 
the  most  terrifying  dangers  await  him.  Against  all 
these  the  deceased  must  now  be  forewarned  and  fore- 
armed, and  hence  a  mass  of  magical  formularies  has 
arisen,  by  the  proper  utterance  of  which  the  dead  may 
overcome  all  these  foes  and  live  in  triumph  and  secur- 
ity. These  charms,  with  many  others  securing  many 
blessings  to  the  dead,  were  written  for  the  use  of  the 
deceased  on  the  inside  of  his  coffin,  and  although  no 
canonical  selection  of  these  texts  yet  existed,  they 
formed  the  nucleus  of  what  afterward  became  the  Book 
of  the  Dead  or,  as  the  Egyptian  later  called  it,  **The 
Chapters  of  Going  Forth  by  Day,"  in  reference  to  their 
great  function  of  enabling  the  dead  to  leave  the  tomb. 
It  will  be  seen  that  in  this  class  of  literature  there  was 
offered  to  an  unscrupulous  priesthood  an  opportunity 
for  gain,  of  which  in  later  centuries  they  did  not  fail  to 
take  advantage.  Already  they  attempted  what  might 
be  termed  a  "guide-book"  of  the  hereafter,  a  geography 
of  the  other  world,  with  a  map  of  the  two  ways  along 
which  the  dead  might  journey.  This  "Book  of  the 
Two  Ways"  was  probably  composed  for  no  other  pur- 
pose than  for  gain;  and  the  tendency  of  which  it  is  an 
evidence  will  meet  us  in  future  centuries  as  the  most 
baleful  influence  of  Eg}^ptian  life  and  religion.  In  the 
material  equipment  of  the  dead,  the  mastaba,  while  it 


STATE,  SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION 


151 


has  not  entirely  disappeared,  has  largely  been  displaced 
by  the  excavated  cliff-tomb,  already  found  so  practical 
and  convenient  by  the  nobles  of  Upper  Egypt  in  the 
Old  Kingdom.  The  kings,  however,  continue  to  build 
pyramids,  as  we  shall  see. 


X 


THE  TWELFTH  DYNASTY 

147.  The  difficult  and  delicate  task  of  reorganization 
doubtless  consumed  a  large  part  of  Amenemhet  I's 
reign,  but  when  it  was  once  thoroughly  accomplished 
his  house  was  able  to  rule  the  country  for  over  two 
centuries.  It  is  probable  that  at  no  other  time  in  the 
history  of  Egypt  did  the  land  enjoy  such  widespread 
and  bountiful  prosperity  as  now  ensued. 

148.  In  the  midst  of  all  this,  when  Amenemhet  fan- 
cied that  he  had  firmly  established  himself  and  his  line 
upon  the  throne  of  the  land  which  owed  him  so  much, 
a  foul  conspiracy  to  assassinate  him  was  conceived 
among  the  official  members  of  his  household.  The 
palace  halls  rang  with  the  clash  of  arms,  and  the  king^s 
life  was  in  danger,  though  he  finally  escaped  (BAR,  I, 
479  /.).  In  the  twentieth  year  of  his  reign  (1980  B.C.), 
probably  no  long  time  after  this  incident,  and  doubtless 
influenced  by  it,  Amenemhet  appointed  his  son  Sesos- 
tris,  the  first  of  the  name,  to  share  the  throne  as  co- 
regent  with  him.  It  was  during  this  coregency  that 
Egypt  again  resumed  a  policy  of  expansion.  In  spite 
of  the  achievements  of  the  Sixth  Dynasty  in  the  South 
the  country  below  the  first  cataract  as  far  north  as  Edfu 
was  still  reckoned  as  belonging  to  Nubia  and  still  bore 
the  name  Tapedet,  "Bow-Land,"  usually  applied  r 
Nubia  (BAR,  I,  500.  1.  4'i.    In  the  twentv-ninth  vear 


THE  TWELFTH  DYNASTY 


153 


of  the  old  king  the  Egyptian  forces  penetrated  Wawat 
to  Korusko,  the  termination  of  the  desert  route,  cutting 
off  the  great  westward  bend  of  the  Nile,  and  captured 
prisoners  among  the  Mazoi  in  the  country  beyond.  We 
can  hardly  doubt  that  the  young  Sesostris  was  the  leader 
of  this  expedition.  Work  was  also  resumed  in  the 
quarries  of  Hammamat,  while  in  the  North  ''the  Trog- 
lodytes, the  Asiatics  and  Sand-dwellers"  on  the  east  of 
the  Delta  were  punished.  This  eastern  frontier  was 
strengthened  at  the  eastern  terminus  of  the  Wady 
Tumilat  by  a  fortification,  perhaps  that  already  in 
existence  under  the  Old  Kingdom  Pharaohs;  and  a 
garrison,  with  its  sentinels  constantly  upon  the  watch 
towers,  was  stationed  there.  Thus  in  North  and  South 
alike  an  aggressive  policy  was  maintained,  the  frontiers 
made  safe  and  the  foreign  connections  of  the  kingdom 
carefully  regarded  (BAR,  I,  500,  1.  4;  472  /.,  466-468, 
469-471,  483,  1.  3;  493,  11.  17-19,  474-483). 

149.  As  the  old  king  felt  his  end  approaching,  he 
delivered  to  his  son  brief  instructions  embodying  the 
ripe  wisdom  which  he  had  accumulated  during  his  long 
career.  The  modern  reader  may  clearly  discern  in 
these  utterances  the  bitterness  with  which  the  attempt 
upon  his  life  by  his  own  immediate  circle  had  imbued 
the  aged  Amenemhet  (BAR,  I,  474-483).  It  was 
probably  not  long  after  this  that  Sesostris  was  dis- 
patched at  the  head  of  an  army  to  chastise  the  Libyans 
on  the  western  frontier.  During  the  absence  of  the 
prince  on  this  campaign  in  1970  B.C.  Amenemhet 
died,  after  a  reign  of  thirty  years  (BAR,  I,  487  jj.). 

150.  The  achievements  of  the  house  of  Amenemhet 
outside  of  the  limits  of  Egypt:  in  Nubia,  Hammamat 
and  Sinai,  have  left  more  adequate  records  in  these 
regions  than  their  beneficent  and  prosperous  rule  in 


154  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


Egypt  itself;  and  the  progress  of  the  dynasty,  at  least 
in  inscribed  records,  can  be  more  clearly  traced  abroad 
than  at  home.  It  will  therefore  be  easier  to  follow  the 
foreign  enterprises  of  the  dynasty  before  we  dwell  upon 
their  achievements  at  home.  We  follow  the  feudatories 
like  Ameni,  later  nomarch  of  the  Oryx-nome,  under  the 
leadership  of  their  liege,  Sesostris  I,  as  they  penetrate 
above  the  second  cataract  into  the  great  region  known 
as  Kush,  which  now  for  the  first  time  becomes  common 
in  the  monumental  records.  The  campaign  is  notable 
as  the  first  in  a  foreign  country  ever  led  by  the  Pharaoh 
personally,  in  so  far  as  v/e  know  (BAR,  I,  519).  Eight 
years  after  the  death  of  his  father,  Sesostris  I  dispatched 
Mentuhotep,  one  of  his  commanders,  on  a  further  cam- 
paign into  Kush.  Mentuhotep  left  a  large  stela  at 
Wady  Haifa,  just  below  the  first  cataract,  recording  his 
triumph  and  giving  us  the  first  list  of  conquered  foreign 
districts  and  towns  which  we  possess.  Mentuhotep 
made  himself  so  prominent  on  his  triumphant  stela 
that  his  figure  was  erased  and  that  of  a  god  placed  over 
it.  All  appearances  would  indicate  that  the  successful 
commander  was  deposed  and  disgraced  (BAR,  I,  510- 
514).  Nubian  gold  now  began  to  flow  into  the  treasury, 
and  Ameni  of  the  Oryx-nome  was  dispatched  to  Nubia 
at  the  head  of  four  hundred  troops  of  his  nome  to  bring 
back  the  output.  The  king  improved  the  occasion  to 
send  with  Ameni  the  young  crown  prince,  who  after- 
wards became  Amenemhet  II,  in  order  that  he  might 
familiarize  himself  with  the  region  where  he  should  one 
day  be  called  upon  to  continue  his  father^s  enterprises 
(BAR,  I,  520).  Similarly  the  gold  country  on  the  east 
of  Coptos  was  now  exploited,  and  the  faithful  Ameni 
was  entrusted  with  the  mission  of  convoying  it.  It  is 
under  the  energetic  Sesostris  I  also,  that  we  first 


THE  TWELFTH  DYNASTY 


155 


hear  of  intercourse  with  the  oases  (BAR,  I,  521,  524- 
528). 

151.  It  was  doubtless  the  reahzation  of  the  evident 
advantage  which  he  had  enjoyed  by  ten  years'  associa- 
tion with  his  father  as  coregent  that  induced  Sesostris  I 
to  appoint  his  own  son  in  the  same  way.  When  he 
died  in  1935  B.  c,  after  a  reign  of  thirty-five  years,  his 
son,  Amenemhet  II  had  already  been  coregent  for  three 
years,  and  assumed  the  sole  authority  without  diffi- 
culty. This  policy  was  also  continued  by  Amenemhet 
II,  and  his  son  Sesostris  II  had  also  ruled  three  years  in 
conjunction  with  his  father  at  the  latter's  death  (BAR, 
I,  460).  For  fifty  years  under  these  two  kings  in  suc- 
cession the  nation  enjoyed  unabated  prosperity.  The 
mines  of  Sinai  were  reopened,  and  the  traffic  with  Punt 
resumed  by  Amenemhet  II  was  continued  under  his 
son.  The  distant  shores  of  Punt  gradually  became 
more  familiar  to  Egyptian  folk,  and  a  popular  tale 
narrates  the  marv^ellous  adventures  of  a  shipwrecked 
seaman  in  these  waters  (AZ,  43).  The  Nubian  gold- 
mines continued  to  be  a  source  of  wealth  to  the  royal 
house,  and  Egyptian  interests  in  Nubia  were  protected 
by  fortresses  in  Wawat,  garrisoned  and  subject  to 
periodical  inspection.  With  the  death  of  Sesostris  II 
in  1887  B.  c,  all  was  ripe  for  the  complete  and  thorough 
conquest  of  the  two  hundred  miles  of  Nile  valley  that 
lie  between  the  first  and  second  cataracts  (BAR,  I,  602, 
604-606,  616-618). 

152.  Immediately  on  his  accession  Sesostris  III  took 
the  preliminary  step  toward  the  completion  of  the  great 
task  in  Nubia,  viz.,  the  establishment  of  unbroken  con- 
nection by  water  with  the  country  above  the  first 
cataract.  What  had  become  of  the  canal  made  by 
Uni,  SLx  hundred  years  before,  we  cannot  say  (see  p.  122). 


156  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


At  the  most  difficult  point  in  the  granite  barrier  the 
engineers  of  Sesostris  III  cut  a  channel  through  the 
rock,  and  many  a  war-galley  of  the  Pharaoh  must  have 
been  drawn  up  through  it  during  the  early  campaigns 
of  this  king,  of  which  we  unfortunately  have  no  records 
(BAR,  I,  642-644).  By  the  eighth  year  the  subjuga- 
tion of  the  country  had  made  such  progress  that  Sesos- 
tris III  was  able  to  select  a  favourable  strategic  position 
as  his  frontier  at  modern  Kummeh  and  Semneh,  situ- 
ated on  opposite  banks  of  the  river  in  the  heart  of  the 
second  cataract  countrv  fortv  miles  above  the  lower 
end.  This  point  he  formally  declared  to  be  the  souths 
ern  boundary  of  his  kingdom.  He  erected  on  each  side 
of  the  river  a  stela  marking  the  boundary-line,  and 
one  of  these  two  important  landmarks  has  survived 
(BAR,  I,  651  /.).  It  was  of  course  impossible  to  main- 
tain the  new  frontier  without  a  constant  display  of 
force.  Sesostris  III  therefore  erected  a  strong  fortress 
on  each  side  of  the  river  at  this  point,  each  with  its 
temple  and  barracks  within  the  enclosure.  These  two 
strongholds  of  Kummeh  and  Semneh  still  survive,  and 
although  in  a  state  of  ruin,  they  show  remarkable  skill 
in  the  selection  of  the  site  and  unexpected  knowledge 
of  the  art  of  constructing  effective  defenses. 

153.  Later  disturbances  among  the  turbulent  Nubian 
tribes  south  of  the  new  frontier  three  times  recalled  the 
king  into  Nubia,  the  last  time  in  his  nineteenth  year 
(BAR,  I,  653  /.,  661).  Although  Egypt  did  not  claim 
sovereignty  in  Kush,  the  country  above  the  second 
cataract,  it  was  nevertheless  necessary  for  the  Pharaoh 
to  protect  the  trade-routes  leading  through  it  to  his 
new  frontier,  from  the  extreme  south — routes  along 
which  the  products  of  the  Sudan  were  now  constantly 
passing  into  Egypt.    The  declaration  of  the  frontier 


THE  TWELFTH  DYNASTY 


157 


on  the  boundary-stela  permitted  the  passage  of  any 
negro  who  came  to  trade,  or  bore  a  matter  of  business 
from  some  southern  chief  (BAR  I,  652).  From  now 
on  it  was  more  often  south  of  his  frontier  that  the 
Pharaoh  was  obliged  to  appear  in  force  than  in  the 
country  between  the  first  two  cataracts.  ^Moreover, 
there  w^as  rich  plunder  to  be  had  on  these  campaigns 
over  the  border,  so  that  the  maintenance  of  the  southern 
trade-routes  was  not  without  its  compensations.  Sesos- 
tris  III  was  able  to  send  his  chief  treasurer,  Ikhernofret, 
to  restore  the  cultus  image  of  Osiris  at  Abydos  with 
gold  captured  in  Kush  (BAR,  I,  665). 

154.  In  the  campaign  of  the  sixteenth  year  he  re- 
newed his  declaration  of  the  southern  boundary  at 
Semneh,  erecting  a  stela  in  the  temple  there  bearing  his 
second  proclamation  of  the  place  of  the  frontier,  and 
exhorting  his  descendants  to  maintain  it  where  he  had 

established  it.    He  also  erected  on  the  boundary  a 

•J 

statue  of  himself,  as  if  to  awe  the  natives  of  the  region 
by  his  very  presence  (BAR,  I,  653-660).  At  the  same 
time  he  strengthened  the  frontier  defenses  by  three  more 
fortresses  in  the  vicinity.  His  vigorous  policy  so 
thoroughly  established  the  supremacy  of  the  Pharaoh 
in  the  newly  won  possessions  that  the  Empire  regarded 
him  as  the  real  conqueror  of  the  region.  He  was  wor- 
shipped already  in  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty  as  the  god 
of  the  land,  while  his  feast  of  victory  was  still  celebrated 
and  his  calendar  of  offerings  renewed  at  the  same  time 
(BAR,  II,  167  j].).  Thus  the  gradual  progress  of  the 
Pharaohs  southward,  which  had  begun  in  prehistoric 
times  at  El  Kab  (Nekhen)  and  had  absorbed  the  first 
cataract  by  the  beginning  of  the  Sixth  Dynasty,  had 
now  reached  the  second  cataract,  and  had  added  two 
hundred  miles  of  the  Nile  valley  to  the  kingdom . 


158   THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


155.  It  is  under  the  aggressive  Sesostris  III  also  that 
we  hear  of  the  first  invasion  of  Syria  by  the  Pharaohs. 
Sebek-khu,  commandant  of  the  residence  city,  men- 
tions on  his  memorial  stone  at  Abydos  that  he  accom- 
panied the  king  on  a  campaign  into  a  region  called 
Sekmem  in  Retenu  (Syria).  The  Asiatics  were  de- 
feated in  battle,  and  Sebek-khu  took  a  prisoner.  He 
narrates  with  visible  pride  how  the  king  rewarded  him, 
and  we  discern  a  trace  of  the  military  enthusiasm  which 
two  centuries  and  a  half  later  achieved  the  conquest  of 
the  Pharaoh's  empire  in  the  same  region.  While  we 
do  not  know  the  location  of  Sekmem  in  Syria,  it  is 
highly  improbable  that  this  was  the  only  expedition  of 
the  Twelfth  Dynasty  kings  into  that  country.  In  some 
degree  the  Pharaohs  of  the  Middle  Kingdom  were  thus 
preparing  the  way  for  the  conquest  in  Asia,  as  those  of 
the  Sixth  Dynasty  had  done  in  Nubia.  Already  in 
Sesostris  I's  time  regular  messengers  to  and  from  the 
Pharaonic  court  were  traversing  Syria  and  Palestine: 
Egyptians  and  the  Egyptian  tongue  were  not  uncom- 
mon there,  and  the  dread  of  the  Pharaoh's  name  was 
already  felt.  At  Gezer,  between  Jerusalem  and  the 
sea,  the  stela  of  an  Egj'ptian  official  of  this  age  and  the 
statue  of  another  have  been  found.  The  port  of 
Byblos,  whence  Snefru  had  brought  cedar  a  thousand 
years  before,  was  well  known  in  Egypt,  and  Egyptian 
women  were  now  named  after  her  goddess  (AZ,  42, 
109).  Khnumhotep  of  Menat-Khufu  depicts  in  his 
well-known  Benihasan  tomb  the  arrival  there  of  thirty- 
seven  Semitic  tribesmen,  who  evidently  came  to  trade. 
Their  leader  w^as  a  "ruler  of  the  hill-country,  Absha," 
a  name  well  knowm  in  Hebrew  as  Abshai.  The  unfor- 
tunate noble,  Sinuhe,  who  fled  to  Syria  at  the  death  of 
Amenemhet  I,  found  not  far  over  the  border  a  friendly 


THE  TWELFTH  DYNASTY 


159 


sheik  who  had  been  in  Egypt;  in  Syria  he  found 
Egyptians  abiding.  While  a  fortress  existed  at  the 
Delta  frontier  to  keep  out  the  marauding  Beduin,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  it  was  no  more  a  hindrance  to 
legitimate  trade  and  intercourse  than  was  the  blockade 
against  the  negroes  maintained  by  Sesostris  III  at  the 
second  cataract.  A  canal  connected  the  Nile  with  this 
fortress  and  the  Bitter  Lakes  of  the  Isthmus  of  Suez, 
thus  joining  the  Nile  and  the  Red  Sea.  The  needs  of 
the  Semitic  tribes  of  neighbouring  Asia  were  already 
those  of  highly  civilized  peoples  and  gave  ample  occa- 
sion for  trade.  Already  the  red  pottery  produced  by 
the  Hittite  peoples  in  Cappadocia,  of  Asia  Minor,  was 
possibly  finding  its  way  to  the  Semites  of  southern 
Palestine.  Undoubtedly  the  commerce  along  this 
route,  through  Palestine,  over  Carmel  and  northward 
to  the  trade-routes  leading  down  the  Euphrates  to 
Babylon,  while  not  yet  heavy,  was  already  long  existent. 
Commerce  with  southern  Europe  had  also  begun.  The 
peoples  of  the  .'Egean,  whose  civilization  had  now  de- 
veloped into  that  of  the  early  Mycenaean  age,  were  not 
unknown  in  Egypt  at  this  time.  Their  potter}^  has 
been  found  at  Kahun  in  burials  of  this  age,  and  the 
.Egean  decorative  art  of  the  time,  especially  in  its  use 
of  spirals,  is  influenced  by  that  of  Eg}'pt.  Europe  thus 
emerges  more  clearly  upon  the  horizon  of  the  Nile  people 
during  the  Middle  Kingdom  (BAR,  I,  676-687;  496, 
1.  94;  620,  note  d;  493  /.;  428;  PEFQS,  1903,  37,  125; 
1905,  317;  1906,  121;  II,  Sam.  x,  10;  AZ,  43,  72  /.). 

156.  For  thirty-eight  years  Sesostris  III  continued 
his  vigorous  rule  of  a  kingdom  which  now  embraced 
a  thousand  miles  of  Nile  valley.  The  regard  in  which 
he  was  held  is  evident  in  the  extraordinary  hymn  in  his 
honour  composed  before  his  death  (GKP).    To  the 


160   THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


name  Sesostris  tradition  attached  the  first  foreign  con- 
quests of  the  Pharaohs.  Around  this  name  clustered 
forever  after  the  stories  of  war  and  conquest  related  by 
the  people,  and  in  Greek  times  Sesostris  had  long  since 
become  but  a  legendary  figure  which  cannot  be  identified 
with  any  particular  king.  As  old  age  drew  on,  Sesos- 
tris III  appointed  his  son  as  coregent,  and  an  account 
of  the  appointment  was  recorded  on  the  walls  of  the 
temple  at  Arsinoe  in  the  Fayum.  At  Sesostris  IIFs 
death  in  1849  B.  c,  this  coregent  son  Amenemhet, 
the  third  of  the  name,  seems  to  have  assumed  the 
throne  without  difiiculty. 

157.  A  number  of  peaceful  enterprises  for  the  pros- 
perity of  the  country  and  the  increase  of  the  royal 
revenues  were  successfully  undertaken  by  Amenemhet 
III.  Operations  in  the  mines  of  Sinai  had  been  resumed 
as  early  as  the  reign  of  Sesostris  1.  It  remained  for 
Amenemhet  III  to  develop  the  equipment  of  the  sta- 
tions in  the  peninsula,  so  that  they  might  become  more 
permanent  than  the  mere  camp  of  a  brief  expedition. 
These  expeditions  suffered  great  hardships,  and  an 
official  of  the  time  describes  the  difficulties  which  beset 
him  when  some  unlucky  chance  had  decreed  that  he 
should  arrive  there  in  summer  (BAR,  I,  733-740). 
Amenemhet  III  therefore  made  the  mines  at  Sarbut  el- 
Khadem  a  well  equipped  station  (BAR,  I,  725-727; 
717  /.,  738).  The  mines  were  placed  each  under 
charge  of  a  foreman,  after  whom  it  was  named,  and  at 
periodic  visits  of  the  treasury  officials  a  fixed  amount  of 
ore  was  expected  from  each  mine.  Here  Egyptians 
died  and  were  buried  in  the  burning  valley  with  all 
the  equipment  customary  at  home,  and  the  ruins  still 
surviving  show  that  what  had  before  been  but  an 
intermittent  and  occasional  effort  had  now  become 


THE  TWELFTH  DYNASTY 


IGl 


a  permanent  and  uninterrupted  industry  (BAR,  I, 
731). 

158.  ^Mlile  forced  to  seek  new  sources  of  wealth  out- 
side of  the  country,  the  Twelfth  Dynasty  monarchs,  as 
we  have  before  intimated,  raised  the  productive  ca- 
pacity of  the  homeland  to  an  unprecedented  level.  Un- 
fortunately, the  annals  or  records  of  these  achievements 
have  not  survived.  We  find  the  officials  of  Amenemhet 
III  in  the  fortress  of  Semneh  in  the  second  cataract 
recording  the  height  of  the  Nile  on  the  rocks  there, 
which  thus  in  a  few  years  became  a  nilometer,  recording 
the  maximum  level  of  the  high  water  from  year  to  year. 
These  records,  still  preserved  upon  the  rocks,  are  from 
twenty-five  to  thirty  feet  higher  than  the  Nile  rises  at 
the  present  day.  Such  obser^-ations,  communicated 
without  delay  to  the  officials  of  Lower  Egypt  in  the 
vizier's  office,  enabled  them  to  estimate  the  crops  of 
the  coming  season,  and  the  rate  of  taxation  was  fixed 
accordingly  (LD,  II,  139;  SBA,  1844,  374  jf.). 

159.  In  Lower  Egypt  a  plan  was  also  devised  for 
extending  the  time  during  which  the  waters  of  the  in- 
undation could  be  made  available  by  an  enormous 
scheme  of  irrigation.  A  glance  at  the  map  will  show 
the  reader  at  a  point  about  sixty-five  miles  above  the 
southern  apex  of  the  Delta  a  great  depression  of  the 
Libyan  desert  known  as  the  Fayum,  a  basin  some  forty 
miles  across,  which  does  not  differ  from  those  of  the 
western  oases,  and  is  indeed  an  extensive  oasis  close  to 
the  Nile  valley,  with  which  it  is  connected  by  a  gap  in 
the  western  hills.  In  prehistoric  times  the  high  Nile 
had  filled  the  entire  Fayum  basin,  producing  a  con- 
siderable lake.  The  kings  of  the  Twelfth  Dynasty 
conceived  the  plan  of  controlling  the  inflow  and  out- 
flow for  the  benefit  of  the  irrigation  system  then  in 


162  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


force.  At  the  same  time  they  undertook  vast  reten- 
tion walls  inside  the  Fayum  at  the  point  where  the 
waters  entered,  in  order  to  reclaim  some  of  the  area  of 
the  Fayum  for  cultivation.  The  earlier  kings  of  the 
Twelfth  Dynasty  began  this  process  of  reclamation, 
but  it  was  especially  Amenemhet  III  who  so  extended 
this  vast  wall  that  it  was  at  last  probably  about 
twenty-seven  miles  long,  thus  reclaiming  a  final  total  of 
twenty-seven  thousand  acres.  These  enormous  works 
at  the  point  where  the  lake  was  most  commonly  vis- 
ited gave  the  impression  that  the  whole  body  of  water 
was  an  artificial  product,  excavated,  as  Strabo  says, 
by  King  "Lamares,"  a  name  in  which  we  recognize 
with  certainty  the  throne  name  of  Amenemhet  III. 
This  was  the  famous  lake  Moeric  of  the  classic  geog- 
raphers and  travellers.  Modern  calculations  have 
shown  that  enough  water  could  have  been  accumulated 
to  double  the  volume  of  the  river  below  the  Fayum 
during  the  hundred  days  of  low  Nile  from  the  first  of 
April  on  (BFLM). 

160.  The  rich  and  flourishing  province  recovered 
from  the  lake  was  doubtless  royal  domain,  and  there  are 
evidences  that  it  was  a  favourite  place  of  abode  with 
the  kings  of  the  latter  part  of  the  Twelfth  Dynasty,  A 
prosperous  town,  known  to  the  Greeks  as  Crocodilo- 
polis,  or  Arsinoe,  with  its  temple  to  Sobk,  the  crocodile- 
god,  arose  in  the  new  province,  and  remains  of  imposing 
monuments  of  the  time  still  lie  near.  In  the  gap,  on 
the  north  bank  of  the  inflowing  canal,  was  a  vast  build- 
ing, some  eight  hundred  by  a  thousand  feet,  which 
formed  a  kind  of  religious  and  administrative  centre 
for  the  whole  country,  with  a  set  of  halls  for  each  nome 
where  its  gods  were  enshrined  and  worshipped,  and  the 
oouncils  of  its  government  gathered  from  time  to  time. 


THE  TWELFTH  DYNASTY 


163 


It  would  seem  from  the  remarks  of  Strabo  that  the 
building  was  the  Pharaoh's  seat  of  government  for  the 
entire  country.  It  was  still  standing  in  Strabo's  timej 
when  it  had  already  long  been  known  as  the  '^Laby- 
rinth/' one  of  the  wonders  of  Egypt,  famous  among 
travellers  and  historians  of  the  Grseco-Roman  world, 
who  compared  its  intricate  complex  of  halls  and  pas- 
sages with  the  Cretan  Labyrinth  of  Greek  tradition. 
The  town  which  had  grown  up  around  this  remarkable 
building  was  seen  by  Strabo;  but  both  have  now  com- 
pletely disappeared.  Sesostris  II  had  also  founded  a 
town  just  outside  the  gap  called  Hotcp-Sesostris, 
Sesostris  is  contented,"  and  he  later  built  his  pyramid 
beside  it.  Under  these  circumstances  the  Fayum  had 
become  the  most  prominent  centre  of  the  royal  and 
governmental  life  of  this  age;  and  its  great  god  Sobk 
was  rivalling  Amon  in  the  regard  of  dynasty,  whose 
last  representative  bore  the  name  Sobk-nefru-Re,  which 
contains  that  of  the  god.  The  name  of  the  god  also 
appeared  in  a  whole  series  of  Sobk-hoteps  of  the  next 
dynasty. 

For  nearly  half  a  century  the  beneficent  rule  of  Ame- 
nemhet  III  maintained  peace  and  prosperity  through- 
out his  flourishing  kingdom  (BAR,  I,  747).  Business 
was  on  a  sound  basis,  values  were  determined  in  terms 
of  weight  in  copper,  and  it  was  customary  to  indicate 
the  value  of  an  article  when  mentioned  in  a  document, 
by  appending  to  it  the  words  "of  x  deben  [of  copper]," 
a  deben  being  1414  grains.  From  the  frontier  forts  in 
the  second  cataract  to  the  Mediterranean,  the  evidences 
of  this  prosperity  under  Amenemhet  III  and  his  prede- 
cessors still  survive  in  the  traces  of  their  extensive  monu- 
ments and  building  enterprises,  although  these  have  so 
suffered  from  the  rebuilding  under  the  Empire  that 


/o4   THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


they  are  but  a  tithe  of  what  was  once  to  be  seen.  More- 
over the  vandaHsm  of  the  Nineteenth  Dynasty,  espe- 
cially under  Ramses  II,  obliterated  priceless  records  of 
the  Middle  Kingdom  by  the  most  reckless  appropriation 
of  its  monuments  as  building  material.  Besides  the 
great  works  of  the  kings,  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that 
the  wealthier  and  more  powerful  of  the  nomarchs  also 
erected  temples  and  considerable  buildings  for  purposes 
of  government;  and,  had  the  various  structures  due  to 
these  great  lords  survived,  there  is  no  doubt  that  they 
would  have  added  materially  to  our  impressions  of  the 
solidity  and  splendour  with  which  the  economic  life  of 
the  nation  was  developing  on  every  hand  (BAR,  I, 
484,  488  /.;  741  /.,  534,  note  b;  674  /.,  498-506,  503, 
637,  note  a;  706). 

161.  Such  impressions  are  also  strengthened  by  the 
tombs  of  the  time,  which  are  indeed  the  only  buildings 
which  have  survived  from  the  feudal  age;  and  even 
these  are  in  a  sad  state  of  ruin.  The  chapel-hall  in 
the  cliff-tombs  of  the  nobles,  with  its  scenes  from  the 
life  and  activity  of  the  departed  lords,  are  our  chief 
source  for  the  history  and  life  of  the  feudal  age.  The 
tombs  of  the  Twelfth  Dynasty  kings  show  that  the  re- 
sources of  the  nation  are  no  longer  absorbed  by  the 
pyramid  as  in  the  Old  Kingdom.  Amenemhet  I  built 
his  pyramid  at  Lisht  of  brick  protected  by  casing 
masonry  of  limestone  (GJL).  The  custom  was  con- 
tinued by  all  the  kings  of  the  dynasty  with  one  excep- 
tion. Their  pyramids  are  scattered  from  the  mouth 
of  the  Fayum  northward  to  Dahshur,  just  south  of 
Memphis.  All  these  pyramids  show  the  most  com- 
plicated and  ingenious  arrangements  of  entrance  and 
passages  in  order  to  baffle  the  tomb-robbers.  Never- 
theless all  were  entered  and  robbed  in  antiquity,  doubt- 


THE  TWELFTH  DYNASTY 


165 


less  with  the  connivance  of  later  officials,  or  even  of  the 
later  kings  themselves.  The  failure  of  these  magnifi- 
cent structures  to  protect  the  bodies  of  their  builders 
must  have  had  something  to  do  with  the  gradual  dis- 
continuance of  pyramid  building  which  now  ensued. 
Henceforward,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  small 
pyramids  at  Thebes,  we  shall  meet  no  more  of  these 
remarkable  tombs,  which,  stretching  in  a  desultory  line 
along  the  margin  of  the  western  desert  for  sixty-five 
miles  above  the  southern  apex  of  the  Delta,  are  the 
most  impressive  surviving  Tsatnesses  to  the  grandeur  of 
the  civilization  which  preceded  the  Empire. 

162.  Unfortunately  the  buildings  of  the  Middle 
Kingdom  are  so  fragmentary  that  we  can  gain  little 
idea  of  their  architecture.  Plastic  art  had  made  a 
certain  kind  of  progress  since  the  Old  Kingdom. 
Sculpture  had  become  much  more  ambitious  and  at- 
tempted works  of  the  most  impressive  size.  The 
statues  of  Amenemhet  III,  which  overlooked  Lake 
Moeris,  were  probably  forty  or  fifty  feet  high,  and  w^e 
find  the  royal  sculptors  furnishing  ten  or  even  sixteen 
colossal  portrait  statues  of  the  king  at  once  (BAR,  I, 
601;  GJL).  Fragments  of  such  colossi  in  massive 
granite  are  scattered  over  the  ruins  of  Tani^  and 
Bubastis,  and  we  recall  that  Sesostris  III  erected  his 
statue  on  the  southern  Nubian  border  (BAR,  I,  660). 
Under  such  circumstances  the  royal  sculptors  could  not 
but  betray  to  some  extent  the  mechanical  and  imitative 
spirit  in  which  they  worked.  Their  figures  do  not  so 
often  possess  the  striking  vivacity  and  the  strong  in- 
dividuality which  are  so  characteristic  of  the  Old 
Kingdom  sculpture.  There  is,  however,  now  and 
then  a  portrait  of  surprising  strength  and  individuality 
(BH,  Figs.  89,  90).    The  chapels  in  the  cliff-tombs  of 


166   THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


the  nomarchs  were  elaborately  decorated  with  paint- 
ings depicting  the  life  of  the  deceased  and  the  indus- 
tries on  his  great  estates.  It  cannot  be  said  that  these 
paintings,  excellent  as  many  of  them  unquestionably 
are,  show  any  progress  over  those  of  the  Old  Kingdom, 
w^hile  as  flat  relief  they  are  for  the  most  part  distinctly 
inferior  to  the  earlier  work. 

163.  The  close  and  familiar  oversight  of  the  nomarch 
lent  a  distinct  impetus  to  the  arts  and  crafts,  and  the 
provinces  developed  large  numbers  of  skilled  craftsmen 
throughout  the  country  (BAR,  I,  638).  Naturally  the 
artisans  of  the  court  were  unsurpassed.  We  discern 
in  their  w^ork  the  result  of  the  development  which  had 
been  going  on  since  the  days  of  the  early  dynasties. 
The  magnificent  jewelry  of  the  princesses  of  the  royal 
house  displays  both  technical  skill  and  refined  taste, 
quite  beyond  our  anticipations.  Little  ever  produced 
by  the  later  goldsmiths  of  Europe  can  surpass  either  in 
beauty  or  in  workmanship  the  regal  ornaments  worn 
by  the  daughters  of  the  house  of  Amenemhet  nearly 
two  thousand  years  before  Christ  (MD,  I). 

164.  It  is  literature  to  which  we  must  look  for  the 
most  remarkable  monuments  of  this  age.  A  system  of 
uniform  orthography,  hitherto  lacking,  was  now  de- 
veloped and  followed  by  skilled  scribes  with  consistency. 
The  language  of  the  age  and  its  literary  products  were 
in  later  times  regarded  as  classic,  and  in  spite  of  its 
excessive  artificialities,  the  judgment  of  modern  study 
confirms  that  of  the  Empire.  Although  it  unquestion- 
ably existed  earlier,  it  is  in  Egypt  and  in  this  period 
that  we  first  find  a  literature  of  entertainment.  The 
unfortunate  noble,  Sinuhe,  who  fled  into  Syria  on  the 
death  of  Amenemhet  I,  returned  to  Egypt  in  his  old 
age,  and  told  the  story  of  his  flight,  of  his  life  and  ad- 


THE  TWELFTH  DYNASTY 


167 


ventures  in  Asia  till  it  became  a  favourite  tale  (BAR,  I, 
486  which  attained  such  popularity  that  it  was  even 
written  on  sherds  and  flags  of  stone  to  be  placed  in  the 
tomb  for  the  entertainment  of  the  dead  in  the  here- 
after. A  prototype  of  Sindbad  the  Sailor,  who  was 
shipwrecked  in  southern  waters  on  the  voyage  to  Punt, 
returned  with  a  tale  of  marvellous  adventures  on  the 
island  of  the  serpent  queen  where  he  was  rescued, 
and  loaded  with  wealth  and  favours,  was  sent  safely 
back  to  his  native  land  (AZ,  43).  The  life  of  the  court 
and  the  nobles  found  reflection  among  the  people  in 
folk-tales,  narrating  the  great  events  in  the  dynastic 
transitions,  and  a  tale  of  the  rise  of  the  Fifth  Dynasty 
was  now  in  common  circulation,  although  our  surviving 
copy  was  written  a  century  or  two  after  the  fall  of  the 
Twelfth  Dynasty  (PW).  The  ablest  literati  of  the 
time  delighted  to  employ  the  popular  tale  as  a  medium 
for  the  exercise  of  their  skill  in  the  artificial  style  now 
regarded  as  the  aim  of  all  composition.  A  story  com- 
monly known  at  the  present  day  as  the  Tale  of  the 
Eloquent  Peasant  was  composed  solely  in  order  to 
place  in  the  mouth  of  a  marvellous  peasant  a  series  of 
speeches  in  which  he  pleads  his  case  against  an  official 
who  had  wronged  him,  with  such  eloquence  that  he  is 
at  last  brought  into  the  presence  of  the  Pharaoh  him- 
self, that  the  monarch  may  enjoy  the  beauty  of  the 
honeyed  rhetoric  which  flows  from  his  lips  (PKM). 
We  have  already  had  occasion  to  notice  the  instruction 
left  by  the  aged  Amenemhet  I  for  his  son,  which  was 
very  popular  and  has  survived  in  no  less  than  seven 
fragmentary  copies  (BAR,  I,  474  ff.).  The  instruction 
concerning  a  wise  and  wholesome  manner  of  life,  which 
was  so  prized  by  the  Egyptians,  is  represented  by  a 
number  of  compositions  of  this  age,  like  the  advice  of 


168  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


the  father  to  his  son  on  the  value  of  the  abiHty  to  write 
(P  Sail.);  or  the  wisdom  of  the  viziers  of  the  Old  King- 
dom; although  there  is  no  reason  why  the  Wisdom  of 
Ptahhotep  and  Kegemne  (PP),  preserv^ed  in  a  papyrus 
of  the  Middle  Kingdom,  should  not  be  authentic  com- 
positions of  these  old  wise  men.  A  remarkable  phi- 
losophizing treatise  represents  a  man  weary  of  life  in- 
volved in  a  long  dialogue  with  his  reluctant  soul  as  he 
vainly  attempts  to  persuade  it  that  they  should  end  life 
together  and  hope  for  better  things  beyond  this  world 
(EG).  A  strange  and  obscure  composition  of  the  time 
represents  a  Sibylline  prophet  named  Ipuwer,  standing 
in  the  presence  of  the  king  and  delivering  grim  prophe- 
cies of  coming  ruin,  in  which  the  social  and  political 
organization  shall  be  overthro-^m,  until  there  shall  come 
a  saviour,  who  shall  be  "  the  shepherd  of  all  the  people," 
and  shall  save  them  from  destruction.  Specimens  of 
this  remarkable  class  of  literature,  of  which  this  is  the 
earliest  example,  may  be  traced  as  late  as  the  early 
Christian  centuries,  and  we  cannot  resist  the  conclusion 
that  it  furnished  the  Hebrew  prophets  with  the  form 
and  to  a  surprising  extent  also  with  the  content  of 
Messianic  prophecy.  It  remained  for  the  Hebrew  to 
give  this  old  form  a  higher  ethical  and  religious  signifi- 
cance (SBA,  xxvii,  601-610). 

165.  So  many  of  the  compositions  of  the  Egyptian 
sciibe  are  couched  in  poetic  language  that  it  is  often 
aifficult  to  distinguish  between  poetry  and  prose.  But 
even  among  the  common  people  there  were  composi- 
tions which  are  distinctively  poems:  the  song  of  the 
threshers  as  they  drive  their  cattle  to  and  fro  upon  the 
threshing-floor,  a  few  simple  lines  breathing  the  whole- 
some industry  of  the  people;  or  the  lay  of  the  harper 
as  he  sings  to  the  banqueters  in  the  halls  of  the  rich — 


THE  TWELFTH  DYNASTY 


169 


a  song  burdened  with  premonitions  of  the  coming  dark- 
ness and  admonishing  to  unbridled  enjoyment  of  the 
present  ere  the  evil  day  come. 

166.  The  earliest  known  example  of  poetry  exhibiting 
rigid  strophic  structure  and  all  the  conscious  aritficiali- 
ties  of  literary  art  is  a  remarkable  hymn  of  six  strophes, 
singing  the  praises  of  Sesostris  III,  and  wTitten  during 
that  king's  lifetime.  The  dramatic  presentation  of  the 
life  and  death  of  Osiris  at  Abydos  undoubtedly  de- 
manded much  dialogue  and  recitation,  which  must  at 
least  have  assumed  permanent  form  and  have  been 
committed  to  TVTiting.  Unfortunately  this,  the  earliest 
kno\\Ti  drama,  has  perished.  It  is  characteristic  of 
this  early  world  that  in  neither  the  art  nor  the  literature, 
of  which  we  have  a  considerable  mass  from  the  ^Middle 
Kingdom,  can  we  discern  any  individuals  to  whom 
these  great  works  should  be  attributed.  Among  all  the 
literar}^  productions  which  we  have  enumerated  it  is 
only  of  the  wisdom,  the  "instruction,"  that  we  know 
the  authors.  Of  the  literature  of  the  age,  as  a  whole, 
we  may  say  that  it  now  displays  a  wealth  of  imagery 
and  a  fine  mastery  of  form  which  five  hundred  years 
earlier,  at  the  close  of  the  Old  Kingdom,  was  but  just 
emerging.  The  content  of  the  surviving  works  does  not 
display  evidence  of  constructive  ability  in  the  larger 
sense,  involving  both  form  and  content.  It  is  possible, 
however,  that  the  Osirian  drama,  which  offered  greater 
constructive  opportunity,  might  have  altered  this  ver- 
dict if  it  had  survived. 

167.  It  was  thus  over  a  nation  in  the  fulness  of  its 
powers,  rich  and  productive  in  every  avenue  of  life, 
that  Amenemhet  III  ruled;  and  his  reign  crowned  the 
classic  age  which  had  dawned  with  the  advent  of  his 
family.    This  may  perhaps  have  been  due  to  the  fact 


170  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM:  THE  FEUDAL  AGE 


that  already  in  the  reign  of  the  mighty  Sesostris  III 
the  power  of  the  feudal  barons  had  been  broken;  we 
find  no  tombs  of  these  rich  country  nobles  from  the 
accession  of  Sesostris  III  on.  The  Pharaoh's  power 
had  suppressed  them  almost  to  disappearance.  Thus 
Amenemhet  III  had  a  free  hand.  But  when  he  passed 
away  in  1801  B.  c.  the  strength  of  the  line  was  wan- 
ing. As  Prammares,  god  of  the  Fayum,  the  worship 
of  the  great  king  survived  far  into  Greek  days.  A 
fourth  Amenemhet,  after  a  short  coregency  with  the 
old  king,  succeeded  at  the  death  of  Amenemhet  III, 
but  his  brief  reign  of  a  little  over  nine  years  has  left 
few  monuments,  and  the  decline  of  the  house,  to  whom 
the  nation  owed  two  centuries  of  imperishable  splen- 
dour, was  evident.  Amenemhet  IV  left  no  son,  for  he 
was  succeeded  by  the  Princess  Sebek-nefru-Re,  the 
Skemiophris  of  Manetho.  After  struggling  on  for 
nearly  four  years  she  too,  the  last  of  her  line,  disap- 
peared. The  family  had  ruled  Egypt  two  hundred 
and  thirteen  years,  one  month  and  some  days  (AZ,  42, 
111  jf.\  43,84;?.;  BAR,  I,  64). 


PART  IV 

THE  HYKSOS: 
THE  RISE  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


XI 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM.    THE  HYKSOS 

168.  While  the  transition  of  authority  to  another 
dynasty  (the  Thirteenth)  had  seemingly  taken  place 
without  disturbance,  its  first  king,  Sekhemre-Khutowe, 
was  early  overthrown  after  a  reign  of  but  five  years. 
Rapid  dissolution  followed,  as  the  provincial  lords 
rose  against  each  other  and  strove  for  the  throne. 
Pretender  after  pretender  struggled  for  supremacy; 
now  and  again  one  more  able  than  his  rivals  would  gain 
a  brief  advantage  and  wear  his  ephemeral  honours, 
only  to  be  quickly  supplanted  by  another.  Private  in- 
dividuals contended  with  the  rest  and  occasionally  won 
the  coveted  goal,  only  to  be  overthrown  by  a  successful 
rival.  A  Sebekemsaf  of  this  time  ruled  long  enough 
to  build  a  modest  pyramid  for  himself  and  his  queen 
at  Thebes,  where  their  bodies  were  found  violated  and 
robbed  six  hundred  and  fifty  years  later,  by  the  Ram- 
essid  inspectors  (BAR,  IV,  517).  At  one  time  a  usur- 
per named  Neferhotep  succeeded  in  overthrowing  one 
of  the  many  Sebekhoteps  of  the  time,  and  established 
stable  government.  He  made  no  secret  of  his  origin, 
and  on  the  monuments  added  the  names  of  his  untitled 
parents  without  scruple  (BAR,  I,  753-765).  He 
reigned  eleven  years,  when  he  was  succeeded  by 
his  son,  Sihathor,  who  shortly  gave  way  to  his  fa- 
ther's brother,  Neferkhere-Sebekhotep  (Note  II;  TP, 

173 


174    THE  HYKSOS:  THE  RISE  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


Frag.  No.  80;  P  Scar.,  No.  309).  It  was,  however, 
but  a  brief  restoration,  and  the  monuments  which 
have  survived  bear  no  records  to  inform  us  of  its 
character. 

169.  The  darkness  which  followed  is  only  the  more 
obscure  by  contrast.  Foreign  adventurers  took  advan- 
tage of  the  opportunity,  and  one  of  the  pretenders 
who  achieved  a  brief  success  was  a  Nubian.  Within 
a  century  and  a  quarter  after  the  fall  of  the  Twelfth 
Dynasty  sixty  of  these  ephemeral  Theban  rulers  had 
held  the  throne,  forming  Manetho's  Thirteenth  Dynas- 
ty. They  left  little  behind  them.  Here  and  there  a 
fragment  of  masonry,  a  statue,  or  sometimes  only  a 
scarab  bearing  a  royal  name,  furnishes  contemporary 
testimony  to  the  brief  reign  of  this  or  that  one  among 
them.  There  was  neither  power,  nor  wealth,  nor  time 
for  the  erection  of  permanent  monuments;  king  still 
followed  king  with  unprecedented  rapidity,  and  for 
most  of  them  our  only  source  of  knowledge  is  therefore 
the  bare  name  in  the  mutilated  Turin  Hst,  the  dis- 
ordered fragments  of  which  have  not  even  preserved  for 
us  the  order  of  these  ephemeral  rulers  except  as  we  find 
groups  upon  one  fragment.  Where  preserved  at  all, 
the  length  of  the  reign  is  usually  but  a  year  or  two, 
while  in  two  cases  we  find  after  a  king's  name  but 
three  days. 

170.  Economically  the  condition  of  the  country  must 
have  rapidly  degenerated.  The  lack  of  a  uniform  ad- 
ministration of  the  irrigation  system,  oppressive  taxa- 
tion and  the  tyranny  of  warring  factions  in  need  of 
funds  sapped  the  energies  and  undermined  the  pros- 
perity of  the  past  two  centuries.  The  hapless  nation 
was  thus  an  easy  prey  to  foreign  aggression.  About 
1657  B.  c,  before  the  close  of  the  Thirteenth  Dynasty, 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM  175 


there  now  poured  into  the  Delta  from  Asia  a  possibly 
Semitic  invasion  such  as  that  which  in  prehistoric  times 
had  stamped  the  language  with  its  unmistakable  form; 
and  again  in  our  own  era,  under  the  influence  of  Mo- 
hammed's teaching,  had  overwhelmed  the  land  (MNC 
34) .  These  invaders,  now  generally  called  the  Hyksos, 
after  the  designation  applied  to  them  by  Josephus 
(quoting  Manetho),  themselves  left  so  few  monuments  in 
Egypt  that  even  their  nationality  is  still  the  subject  of 
much  difference  of  opinion;  while  the  exact  length  and 
character  of  their  supremacy,  for  the  same  reason,  are 
equally  obscure  matters.  The  documentary  materials 
bearing  on  them  are  so  meagre  and  limited  in  extent 
that  the  reader  may  easily  survey  them  and  judge  the 
question  for  himself,  even  if  this  chapter  is  thereby 
in  danger  of  relapsing  into  a  ''laboratory  note-book." 
The  late  tradition  regarding  the  Hyksos,  recorded  by 
Manetho  and  preserved  to  us  in  the  essay  of  Josephus 
against  Apion,  is  but  the  substance  of  a  folk-tale  like 
that  narrating  the  fall  of  the  Fourth  Dynasty  (above,  p. 
112).  The  more  ancient  and  practically  contemporary 
evidence  should  therefore  be  questioned  first 

IVo  generations  after  the  Hyksos  had  been  expelled 
from  the  country,  the  great  queen,  Hatshepsut,  narrating 
her  restoration  of  the  temples  they  had  desecrated,  calls 
them  "Asiatics"  and  "barbarians"  dwelhng  in  Avaris, 
and  ruling  "in  ignorance  of  Re"  (BAR,  II,  303). 
The  still  earlier  evidence  of  a  soldier  in  the  Egyptian 
army  that  expelled  the  Hyksos  shows  that  a  siege  of 
Avaris  was  necessary  to  drive  them  frpm  the  country; 
and,  further,  that  the  pursuit  of  them  was  continued 
into  southern  Palestine,  and  ultimately  into  Phoenicia 
or  Coelesyria  (BAR,  II,  8-10;  12  /.,  20).  Some  four 
hundred  years  after  their  expulsion  a  folk-tale,  narrat- 


176    THE  HYKSOS:  THE  RISE  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


ing  the  cause  of  the  final  war  against  them,  was  cir- 
culating among  the  people.  It  gives  an  interesting 
account  of  them: 

"Now  it  came  to  pass  that  the  land  of  Egypt  was 
the  possession  of  the  polluted,  no  lord  being  king  at  the 
time  when  it  happened;  but  King  Sekenenre,  he  was  ruler 
of  the  Southern  City  [Thebes]  .  .  .  King  Apophis  was 
in  Avaris,  and  the  whole  land  was  tributary  to  him; 
the  [Southland]  bearing  their  impost,  and  the  North- 
land likewise  bearing  every  good  thing  of  the  Delta. 
Now  King  Apophis  made  Sutekh  his  lord,  serving  no 
other  god,  who  was  in  the  whole  land,  save  Sutekh. 
He  built  the  temple  in  beautiful  and  everlasting  work. 
.  .      (P  Sail.,  I,  11.  1-3). 

171.  From  these  earlier  documents  it  is  evident  that 
the  Hyksos  were  an  Asiatic  people  who  ruled  Egypt 
from  their  stronghold  of  Avaris  in  the  Delta.  The 
exact  site  of  Avaris  is  still  undetermined.  The  later 
tradition  as  quoted  from  Manetho  by  Josephus  in  the 
main  corroborates  the  above  more  trustworthy  evidence, 
and  is  as  follows: 

"There  was  a  king  of  ours  whose  name  was  Timaios, 
in  whose  reign  it  came  to  pass,  I  know  not  why,  that 
God  was  displeased  with  us,  and  there  came  unex- 
pectedly men  of  ignoble  birth  out  of  the  eastern  parts, 
who  had  boldness  enough  to  make  an  expedition  into 
our  country,  and  easily  subdued  it  by  force  without  a 
battle.  And  when  they  had  got  our  rulers  under  their 
power,  they  afterward  savagely  burnt  down  our  cities 
and  demolished  the  temples  of  the  gods,  and  used  all 
the  inhabitants  in  a  most  hostile  manner,  for  they  slew 
some  and  led  the  children  and  wives  of  others  into 
slavery.  At  length  they  made  one  of  themselves  king, 
whose  name  was  Salatis,  and  he  lived  at  Memphis  and 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM  177 


made  both  Upper  and  Lower  Egypt  pay  tribute,  and 
left  garrisons  in  places  that  were  most  suitable  for 
them.  And  he  made  the  eastern  part  especially  strong, 
as  he  foresaw  that  the  iVssyrians,  who  had  then  the 
greatest  power,  would  covet  their  kingdom  and  invade 
them.  And  as  he  found  in  the  Saite  [read  Sethroite] 
nome  a  city  very  fit  for  his  purpose — which  lay  east 
of  the  arm  of  the  Nile  near  Bubastis,  and  with  regard 
to  a  certain  theological  notion  w^as  called  Avaris — he 
rebuilt  it  and  made  it  very  strong  by  the  walls  he  built 
around  it  and  by  a  numerous  garrison  of  two  hundred 
and  forty  thousand  armed  men,  whom  he  put  into  it  to 
keep  it.  There  Salatis  went  every  summer,  partly  to 
gather  in  his  corn  and  pay  his  soldiers  their  wages,  and 
partly  to  train  his  armed  men  and  so  to  awe  foreigners 
(Contra  Apion,  I,  14). 

172.  If  we  eliminate  the  absurd  reference  to  the 
Assyrians  and  the  preposterous  number  of  the  garrison 
at  Avaris,  the  tale  may  be  credited  as  in  general  a  prob- 
able narrative.  The  further  account  of  the  Hyksos  in 
the  same  essay  shows  clearly  that  the  late  tradition  was 
at  a  loss  to  identify  them  as  to  nationality  and  origin. 
Still  quoting  from  Manetho,  Josephus  says:  "All  this 
nation  was  styled  Hyksos,  that  is,  Shepherd  Kings; 
for  the  first  syllable  *hyk'  in  the  sacred  dialect  denotes 
a  king,  and  'sos'  signifies  a  shepherd,  but  this  is  only 
according  to  the  vulgar  tongue;  and  of  these  was  com- 
pounded the  term  Hyksos.  Some  say  they  were  Ara- 
bians." According  to  his  epitomizers,  Manetho  also 
called  them  Phoenicians.  Turning  to  the  designations 
of  Asiatic  rulers  as  preserved  on  the  Middle  Kingdom 
and  Hyksos  monuments,  there  is  no  such  term  to  be 
found  as  "ruler  of  shepherds,"  and  Manetho  wisely 
adds  that  the  word  "sos"  only  means  shepherd  in  the 


178    THE  HYKSOS:  THE  RISE  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


late  vulgar  dialect.  There  is  no  such  word  knowTi  in 
the  older  language  of  the  monuments.  ''Hyk"  (Egyp- 
tian HY)y  however,  is  a  common  word  for  ruler,  as 
Manetho  says,  and  Khian,  one  of  the  Hyksos  kings, 
often  gives  himself  this  title  upon  his  monuments,  fol- 
lowed by  a  word  for  "countries,"  which  by  slight  and 
very  common  phonetic  changes  might  become  "sos"; 
so  that  "Hyksos"  is  a  not  improbable  Greek  spelling 
for  the  Egyptian  title  "Ruler  of  Countries." 

173.  Looking  further  at  the  scanty  monuments  left 
by  the  Hyksos  themselves,  we  discover  a  few  vague  but 
nevertheless  significant  hints  as  to  the  character  of 
these  strange  invaders,  whom  tradition  called  Arabians 
and  Phoenicians;  and  contemporary  monuments  desig- 
nated as  "Asiatics,"  "barbarians,"  and  "rulers  of 
countries."  An  Apophis,  one  of  their  kings,  fashioned 
an  altar,  now  at  Cairo,  and  engraved  upon  it  the  dedi- 
cation: "He  [Apophis]  made  it  as  his  monument  for 
his  father  Sutekh,  lord  of  Avaris,  when  he  [Sutekh]  set 
all  lands  under  his  [the  king's]  feet"  (MMD,  38). 
General  as  is  the  statement,  it  would  appear  that  this 
Apophis  ruled  over  more  than  the  land  of  Egypt. 
More  significant  are  the  monuments  of  Khian,  the 
most  remarkable  of  this  line  of  kings.  They  have  been 
found  from  Gebelen  in  southern  Egypt  to  the  northern 
Delta;  but  they  do  not  stop  here.  Under  a  Mycenaean 
wall  in  the  palace  of  Cnossos  in  Crete  an  alabaster  vase- 
lid  bearing  his  name  was  discovered  by  ]Mr.  Evans 
(Annual  of  British  School  at  Athens,  VII,  65,  Fig.  21); 
while  a  granite  lion  with  his  cartouche  upon  the  breast, 
found  many  years  ago  at  Bagdad,  is  now  in  the  British 
Museum.  One  of  his  vojdX  names  was  "Encompasser 
[literally 'embracer ']  of  the  Lands,"  and  we  recall  that  his 
constant  title  upon  his  scarabs  and  cylinders  is  "ruler  of 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM  179 


countries."  Scarabs  of  the  Hyksos  rulers  have  been 
turned  up  by  the  excavations  in  southern  Palestine. 
Meagre  as  these  data  are,  one  cannot  contemplate 
them  without  seeing  conjured  up  before  him  the  vision 
of  a  vanished  empire  which  once  stretched  from  the 
Euphrates  to  the  first  cataract  of  the  Nile,  an  empire 
of  which  all  other  evidence  has  perished,  for  the  reason 
that  Avaris,  the  capital  of  its  rulers,  was  in  the  Delta 
where,  like  so  many  other  Delta  cities,  it  suffered  a 
destruction  so  complete  that  we  cannot  even  locate  the 
spot  on  which  it  once  stood.  There  was,  moreover, 
every  reason  why  the  victorious  Egyptians  should  anni- 
hilate all  evidence  of  the  supremacy  of  their  hated  con- 
querors. In  the  light  of  these  developments  it  becomes 
evident  why  the  invaders  did  not  set  up  their  capital 
in  the  midst  of  the  conquered  land,  but  remained  in 
Avaris,  on  the  extreme  east  of  the  Delta,  close  to  the 
borders  of  Asia.  It  was  that  they  might  rule  not  only 
Egypt,  but  also  their  Asiatic  dominions.  Accepting  the 
above  probabilities,  we  can  also  understand  how  the 
Hyksos  could  retire  to  Asia  and  withstand  the  Egyptian 
onset  for  three  years  in  southern  Palestine,  as  we  know 
from  contemporary  evidence  they  did  (BAR,  II,  13). 
It  then  becomes  clear  also  how  they  could  retreat  to 
Syria  when  beaten  in  southern  Palestine;  these  move- 
ments were  possible  because  they  controlled  Palestine 
and  Syria. 

174.  If  we  ask  ourselves  regarding  the  nationality, 
origin  and  character  of  this  mysterious  Hyksos  empire, 
we  can  hazard  little  in  reply.  Manetho's  tradition  that 
they  were  Arabians  and  Phoenicians,  if  properly  inter- 
preted, may  be  correct.  Such  an  overflow  of  southern 
Semitic  emigration  into  Syria,  as  we  know  has  since 
then  taken  place  over  and  over  again,  may  well  have 


180    THE  HYKSOS:  THE  RISE  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


brought  together  these  two  elements;  and  a  generation 
or  two  of  successful  warrior-leaders  might  weld  them 
together  into  a  rude  state.  The  wars  of  the  Pharaohs 
in  Syria  immediately  after  the  expulsion  of  the  Hyksos 
show  the  presence  of  civilized  and  highly  developed 
states  there.  Now,  such  an  empire  as  we  believe  the 
Hyksos  ruled  could  hardly  have  existed  without  leaving 
its  traces  among  the  peoples  of  Syria-Palestine  for  some 
generations  after  the  beginning  of  the  Egyptian  su- 
premacy in  Asia  which  now  followed.  It  would  there- 
fore be  strange  if  we  could  not  discern  in  the  records 
of  the  subsequent  Egyptian  wars  in  Asia  some  evidence 
of  the  surviving  wreck  of  the  once  great  Hyksos  empire 
which  the  Pharaohs  demolished. 

175.  For  two  generations  after  the  expulsion  of  the 
Hyksos  we  can  gain  little  insight  into  the  conditions  in 
Syria.  At  this  point  the  ceaseless  campaigns  of  Thut- 
mose  III,  as  recorded  in  his  Annals,  enable  us  to  dis- 
cern which  nation  was  then  playing  the  leading  role 
there.  The  great  coalition  of  the  kings  of  Palestine 
and  Syria,  with  which  Thutmose  III  was  called  upon 
to  contend  at  the  beginning  of  his  wars,  was  led  and 
dominated  throughout  by  the  powerful  king  of  Kadesh 
on  the  Orontes.  It  required  ten  years  of  constant 
campaigning  by  Thutmose  III  to  achieve  the  capture 
of  the  stubborn  city  and  the  subjugation  of  the  kingdom 
of  which  it  was  the  head;  but  with  power  still  un- 
broken it  revolted,  and  Thutmose  IIFs  twenty  years 
of  warfare  in  Syria  were  only  crowned  with  victory 
when  he  finally  succeeded  in  again  defeating  Kadesh, 
after  a  dangerous  and  persistent  struggle.  The  leader- 
ship of  Kadesh  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  Thut- 
mose IIFs  campaigns  is  such  as  to  show  that  many 
Syrian  and  Palestinian  kinglets,  especially  in  southern 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM  181 


Lebanon,  were  its  vassals.  It  is  in  this  Syrian  domi- 
nation of  the  king  of  Kadesh  that  we  should  probably 
recognize  the  last  nucleus  of  the  Hyksos  empire,  finally 
annihilated  by  the  genius  of  Thutmose  III.  Hence  it 
was  that  Thutmose  III,  the  final  destroyer  of  the 
Hyksos  empire,  became  also  the  traditional  hero  who 
expelled  the  invaders  from  Egypt;  and  as  Misphrag- 
mouthosis  he  thus  appears  in  Manetho's  story  as  the 
liberator  of  his  country.  That  it  was  an  empire  of 
some  Semitic  elements  we  cannot  doubt,  in  view  of  the 
Manethonian  tradition  and  the  subsequent  conditions 
in  Syria-Palestine.  Moreover  the  scarabs  of  a  Pharaoh 
who  evidently  belonged  to  the  Hyksos  time  give  his 
name  as  Jacob-her  or  possibly  Jacob-El,  and  it  is  not 
impossible  that  some  chief  of  the  Jacob-tribes  of  Israel 
for  a  time  gained  the  leadership  in  this  obscure  age. 
Such  an  incident  would  account  surprisingly  well  for 
the  entrance  of  these  tribes  into  Egypt,  which  on  any 
hypothesis  must  have  taken  place  at  about  this  age; 
and  in  that  case  the  Hebrews  in  Egypt  will  have  been 
but  a  part  of  the  Beduin  allies  of  the  Kadesh  or  Hyksos 
empire,  whose  presence  there  brought  into  the  tradition 
the  partially  correct  impression  that  the  Hyksos  were 
shepherds,  and  led  Manetho  to  his  untenable  etymology 
of  the  second  part  of  the  word.  Likewise  the  naive 
assumption  of  Josephus,  who  identifies  the  Hyksos  with 
the  Hebrews,  may  thus  contain  a  kernel  of  truth,  how- 
ever accidental.  But  such  precarious  combinations 
should  not  be  made  without  a  full  realization  of  their 
hazardous  character. 

176.  Of  the  reign  of  these  remarkable  conquerors  in 
Egypt  we  know  no  more  than  of  their  contemporaries, 
the  Egyptian  dynasts  of  this  age.  Shortly  after  the 
invasion  of  the  Hyksos,  the  Thirteenth  Dynasty  at 


182    THE  HYKSOS:  THE  RISE  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


Thebes  died  out  about  1665  B.  c.  The  local  Four- 
teenth Dynasty  at  Xois  in  the  Delta  had  probably 
already  arisen  as  ephemeral  vassals  of  the  Hyksos. 
Similar  vassals  doubtless  continued  to  rule  in  Thebes 
and  probably  throughout  Upper  Egypt.  Both  the  ac- 
count in  Manetho  and  the  folk-tale  above  quoted  state 
that  the  Hyksos  kings  laid  the  whole  country  under 
tribute,  and  we  have  already  observed  that  Hyksos 
monuments  have  been  found  as  far  south  as  Gebelen. 
The  beginning  of  their  rule  may  have  been  a  gradual 
immigration  without  hostilities,  as  Manetho  relates.  It 
is  perhaps  in  this  epoch  that  we  should  place  one  of 
their  kings,  a  certain  Khenzer,  who  seems  to  have  left 
the  affairs  of  the  country  largely  in  the  hands  of  his 
vizier,  Enkhu,  so  that  the  latter  administered  and  re- 
stored the  temples  (BAR,  I,  781-787).  As  this  vizier 
lived  in  the  period  of  Neferhotep  and  the  connected 
Sebekhoteps,  it  is  evident  that  we  should  place  the 
gradual  rise  of  Hyksos  power  in  Egypt  just  after  that 
group  of  Pharaohs. 

177.  From  the  contemporary  monuments  we  learn 
the  names  of  three  Apophises  and  of  Khian,  besides 
possibly  Khenzer  and  Jacob-her,  whom  we  have  al- 
ready noted.  Among  the  six  names  preserved  from 
iNIanetho  by  Josephus  we  can  recognize  but  two,  an 
Apophis  and  lannas,  who  is  certainly  the  same  as  Khian 
of  the  contemporary  monuments.  The  only  contem- 
porary date  is  that  of  the  thirty-third  year  of  an  Apophis, 
in  the  mathematical  papyrus  of  the  British  Museum. 
The  Manethonian  tradition  in  which  we  find  three 
dynasties  of  shepherds  or  Hyksos  (the  Fifteenth  to 
Seventeenth)  is  totally  without  support  from  the  con- 
temporary monuments  in  the  matter  of  the  duration  of 
the  Hyksos  supremacy  in  Egypt.    A  hundred  years  is 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  MIDDLE  KINGDOM 


183 


ample  for  the  whole  period.  Even  if  it  was  actually 
much  longer,  this  fact  would  not  necessarily  extend  the 
length  of  the  period  from  the  fall  of  the  Twelfth  Dy- 
nasty to  the  end  of  the  Hyksos  rule;  for  it  is  evident 
that  many  of  the  numerous  kings  of  this  period,  enu- 
merated in  the  Turin  Papyrus,  ruled  as  vassals  of  the 
Hyksos,  like  the  Sekenenre,  whom  the  folk-tale  makes 
the  Theban  vassal  of  one  of  the  Apophises. 

178.  'What  occasioned  the  unquestionable  barbarities 
on  the  part  of  the  conquerors,  it  is  now  impossible 
to  discern;  but  it  is  evident  that  hostilities  must  have 
eventually  broken  out,  causing  the  destruction  of  the 
temples,  later  restored  by  Hatshepsut.  Their  patron 
god  Sutekh  is  of  course  the  Egyptianized  form  of  some 
Syrian  Baal;  Sutekh  being  an  older  form  of  the  w^ell- 
known  Egyptian  Set.  The  Hyksos  kings  themselves 
must  have  been  rapidly  Egyptianized;  they  assumed 
the  complete  Pharaonic  titulary,  and  they  appropriated 
statues  of  their  predecessors  in  the  Delta  cities,  wTOUght, 
of  course,  in  the  conventional  style  peculiar  to  the 
Pharaohs.  Civilization  did  not  essentially  suffer;  a 
mathematical  treatise  dated  under  one  of  the  Apophises 
is  preserved  in  the  British  Museum.  We  have  already 
seen  one  of  the  Apophises  building  a  temple  in  Avaris, 
and  a  fragment  of  a  building  inscription  of  an  Apophis 
at  Bubastis  says  that  he  made  "numerous  flag-staves 
tipped  with  copper  for  this  god,"  such  flag-staves  flying 
a  tuft  of  gaily  coloured  pennants  being  used  to  adorn  a 
temple  front  (NB,  I,  pi.  35  c).  Having  once  gained 
the  upper  hand,  the  Hyksos  Dynasty  evidently  slowly 
decayed  to  become  at  last  much  like  their  own  Egyptian 
vassals.  The  country  was  now  broken  up  into  petty 
kingdoms,  of  which  Thebes  was  evidently  the  largest 
in  the  South.    Nubkheprure-Intef,  one  of  a  group  of 


184  THE  HYKSOS :  THE  RISE  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


three  Intefs  who  ruled  there,  frankly  discloses  the  con- 
ditions in  a  decree  of  banishment,  naively  declaring 
that  no  other  king  or  ruler  showing  mercy  to  a  banished 
traitor  shall  become  Pharaoh  of  the  whole  country 
(BAR,  I,  773-780).  These  Intefs  were  buried  at 
Thebes,  where  the  pyramids  of  two  of  them  were  in- 
spected five  hundred  years  later  by  the  Ramessid  com- 
missioners, who  found  that  one  of  them  had  been  tun- 
nelled into  by  tomb  robbers  (BAR,  IV,  514  /.;  517, 
538).  The  influence  upon  Egypt  of  such  a  foreign 
dominion,  including  both  Syria-Palestine  and  the  lower 
Nile  valley,  was  epoch  making,  and  had  much  to  do 
with  the  fundamental  transformation  which  began  with 
the  expulsion  of  these  aliens.  It  brought  the  horse  into 
the  Nile  valley  and  taught  the  Egyptians  warfare  on 
a  large  scale.  Whatever  they  may  have  suffered,  the 
Egyptians  owed  an  incalculable  debt  to  their  con- 
querors. 


xn 


THE  EXPULSION  OF  THE  HYKSOS  AND  THE  TRIUMPH 

OF  THEBES 

179.  It  must  have  been  about  1600  B.C.,  nearly  two 
hundred  years  after  the  fall  of  the  Twelfth  Dynasty, 
that  the  Sekenere  of  the  folk-tale  was  ruling  in  Thebes 
under  the  suzerainty  of  a  Hyksos  Apophis  in  Avaris 
(see  p.  176).  This  tale,  as  current  four  hundred  years 
later  in  Ramessid  days,  is  our  only  source  for  the  events 
that  immediately  followed.  After  its  account  of  the 
Hyksos,  which  the  reader  will  recall  as  quoted  above, 
there  finally  follows  a  council  of  Apophis  and  his  wise 
men;  but  what  took  place  at  this  council  is  quite  un- 
certain. It  concerned  a  plot  or  design  against  King 
Sekenenre,  however,  for  the  story  then  recounts  how 
Apophis  sent  a  messenger  to  complain  to  King  Sekenenre 
in  Thebes,  that  the  noise  of  the  hippopotami  there  dis- 
turbed his  sleep  in  Avaris.  Here  the  tantalizing  bit 
of  papyrus  is  torn  off,  and  we  shall  never  know  the 
conclusion  of  the  tale  (P  Sail.,  I,  II,  1.  l-III,  1.  3). 
However,  what  we  have  in  it  is  the  popular  and  tradi- 
tional version  of  an  incident,  doubtless  regarded  as  the 
occasion  of  the  long  war  between  the  Theban  princes 
and  the  Hyksos  in  Avaris.  The  preposterous  casiLS 
belli,  is  folk-history,  a  wave  mark  among  the  people, 
left  by  the  tide  which  the  Hyksos  war  set  in  motion. 
Manetho  corroborates  the  general  situation  depicted  in 

too 


186    THE  HYKSOS:  THE  RISE  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


the  tale;  for  he  says  that  the  kings  of  the  Thebaid  and 
other  parts  of  Egypt  made  a  great  and  long  war  upon 
the  Hyksos  in  Avaris.  His  use  of  the  plural  ''kings'* 
immediately  suggests  the  numerous  local  dynasts,  whom 
we  have  met  before,  each  contending  with  his  neigh- 
bour and  effectually  preventing  the  country  from  pre- 
senting a  united  front  to  the  northern  foe.  There  were 
three  Sekenenres.  The  mummy  of  the  last  of  the  three 
discovered  in  the  great  find  at  Der  el-Bahri,  and  now 
at  the  Cairo  museum,  exhibits  frightful  wounds  in  the 
head,  so  that  he  doubtless  fell  in  battle,  not  improbably 
in  the  Hyksos  war.  They  were  followed  by  a  King 
Kemose  who  probably  continued  the  war.  This 
Theban  family,  who  form  the  latter  part  of  Manetho's 
Seventeenth  Dynasty,  were  obliged  to  maintain  them- 
selves not  merely  against  the  Hyksos,  but  also  against 
numerous  rival  dynasts,  especially  in  the  extreme  South 
above  El  Kab.  Here,  removed  from  the  turmoil  of 
northern  war,  and  able  to  carry  on  a  flourishing  internal 
commerce,  the  local  princes  enjoyed  great  prosperity, 
w^hile  those  of  the  North  had  doubtless  in  many  in- 
stances perished.  We  shall  later  find  these  prosperous 
dynasts  of  the  South  holding  out  against  the  rising 
power  of  Thebes  while  the  latter  was  slowly  expelling 
the  Hyksos. 

180.  Following  Kemose's  short  reign,  Ahmose  I,  pos- 
sibly his  son,  the  first  king  of  Manetho's  Eighteenth 
Dynasty,  assumed  the  leadership  of  the  Theban  house, 
about  1580  b.  c,  and  became  the  deliverer  of  Egypt 
from  her  foreign  lords.  He  succeeded  in  holding  the 
valuable  support  of  the  povrerful  El  Kab  princes,  al- 
ready won  by  Sekenenre  III,  and  he  employed  them 
against  both  the  Hyksos  and  the  obstinate  local  dynasts 
of  the  upper  river,  who  constantly  threatened  his  rear. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THEBES 


187 


Ahmose  thus  made  El  Kab  a  buffer,  which  protected 
him  from  the  attacks  of  his  Egyptian  rivals  south  of 
that  city.  No  document  bearing  on  the  course  of  the 
war  with  the  Hyksos  in  its  earlier  stages  has  survived 
to  us,  nor  have  any  o  Ahmose's  royal  annals  been  pre- 
served, but  one  of  bis  El  Kab  allies,  named  Ahmose, 
son  of  Ebana,  has  fortunately  left  an  account  of  his 
own  military  career  on  the  walls  of  his  tomb  at  El  Kab 
(BAR,  II,  17  ^.).  He  tells  how  he  was  taken  from  Ei 
Kab  and  given  service  in  the  northern  fleet  against  the 
Hyksos  in  Avaris.  After  three  battles  before  the  city, 
the  siege  of  Avaris  was  interrupted  by  an  uprising  of 
one  of  Ahmose's  southern  enemies,  a  hostile  dynasty 
above  El  Kab — a  danger  which  was  regarded  as  so 
serious  by  the  king  that  he  himself  went  south  to  meet 
it,  and  took  Ahmose,  son  of  Ebana,  with  him.  Having 
sufficiently  quelled  his  southern  rivals,  Ahmose  resumed 
the  siege  of  xVvaris,  for  at  this  point  our  naval  officer 
abruptly  announces  its  capture:  ^'One  captured  Avaris; 
I  took  captive  there  one  man  and  three  women,  total 
four  heads.  His  majesty  gave  them  to  me  for  slaves." 
The  city  thus  fell  on  the  fourth  assault  after  the  arrival 
of  Ahmose,  son  of  Ebana,  but  it  is  quite  uncertain  how 
many  such  assaults  had  been  made  before  his  trans- 
ference thither,  for  the  siege  had  evidently  lasted  many 
years  and  had  been  interrupted  by  a  rebellion  in  Upper 
Egypt  (B.\Il,  n,  7-12). 

181.  Ahmose  I  pursued  the  Hyksos  fleeing  into  Asia 
after  being  driven  from  Avaris,  and  they  took  refuge  in 
Sharuhen,  probably  in  southern  Judah  (Josh.,  19,  6). 
Our  biographer  now  says:  *'One  besieged  Sharuhen 
for  three  years  and  his  majesty  took  it.  Then  I  took 
captive  there  two  women  and  one  hand.  One  gave 
to  me  the  gold  of  bravery  besides  giving  me  the  captives 


188    THE  HYKSOS:  THE  RISE  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


for  slaves"  (Note  III;  BAR,  II,  13).  This  is  the 
earliest  siege  of  such  length  known  in  history,  and  it  is 
surprising  evidence  of  the  stubbornness  of  the  Hyksos 
defence  and  the  tenacity  of  King  Ahmose  in  dislodging 
them  from  a  stronghold  in  such  dangerous  proximity 
to  the  Egyptian  frontier.  Ahmose  then  pursued  the 
Hyksos  northward  from  Sharuhen,  forcing  them  back 
to  at  least  a  safe  distance  from  the  Delta  frontier. 
Returning  to  Egypt,  now  entirely  free  from  all  fear  of 
its  Hyksos  lords,  he  gave  his  attention  to  the  recovery 
of  the  Egyptian  possessions  in  Nubia. 

182.  During  the  long  period  of  disorganization  fol- 
lowing the  Middle  Kingdom,  the  Nubians  had  natur- 
ally taken  advantage  of  their  opportunity  and  fallen 
away.  How  far  Ahmose  penetrated  it  is  impossible  to 
determine,  but  he  was  no  sooner  well  out  of  the  country 
on  the  Nubian  campaign  than  his  inveterate  rivals 
south  of  El  Kab  again  arose  against  him.  Totally  de- 
feated in  a  battle  on  the  Nile,  they  rose  yet  again  and 
Ahmose  was  obliged  to  quell  one  more  rebellion  before 
he  was  left  in  undisputed  possession  of  the  throne.  Oui 
old  friend  Ahmose,  son  of  Ebana,  was  rewarded  foi 
his  valour  in  these  actions  with  five  slaves  and  five  stat 
(nearly  three  and  a  half  acres)  of  land  in  El  Kab, 
and  again  he  says:  "There  were  given  to  me  three  heads 
[slaves]  and  five  stat  of  land  in  my  city."  His  comrades 
were  treated  with  equal  generosity  (BAR,  II,  14-16). 
We  thus  see  how  king  Ahmose  bound  his  supporters 
to  his  cause.  He  did  not  stop,  however,  with  gold, 
slaves  and  land,  but  in  some  cases  even  granted  the 
local  princes,  the  descendants  of  the  great  feudal 
lords  of  the  ^Middle  Kingdom,  high  and  royal  titles  like 
"first  king's  son,"  which,  while  perhaps  conveying  few 
or  no  prerogatives,  satisfied  the  vanity  of  old  and  illustri- 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THEBES 


189 


ous  families,  like  that  of  El  Kab,  who  deserved  well  at 
his  hands.  There  were  but  few  of  the  local  nobles  who 
thus  supported  Ahmose  and  gained  his  favour;  the 
larger  number  opposed  both  him  and  the  Hyksos  and 
perished  in  the  struggle.  Their  more  fortunate  fellows, 
being  now  nothing  more  than  court  and  administrative 
officials,  the  feudal  lords,  who  had  survived  the  re- 
pressive hand  of  the  Pharaoh  during  the  second  half 
of  the  Middle  Kingdom,  thus  practically  disappeared. 
The  lands  which  formed  their  hereditary  possessions 
were  confiscated  and  passed  to  the  crown,  where  they 
permanently  remained.  There  was  one  notable  ex- 
ception; the  house  of  El  Kab,  to  which  the  Theban 
dynasty  owed  so  much,  was  allowed  to  retain  its  lands, 
and  two  generations  after  the  expulsion  of  the  Hyksos, 
the  head  of  the  house  appears  as  lord,  not  only  of  El 
Kab  but  also  Esneh  and  all  the  intervening  territory. 
Besides  this  he  was  given  administrative  charge,  though 
not  hereditary  possession,  of  the  lands  of  the  south  from 
the  vicinity  of  Thebes  (Per-Hathor)  to  El  Kab.  Yet 
this  exception  serves  but  to  accentuate  more  sharply  the 
total  extinction  of  the  landed  nobility,  who  had  formed 
the  substance  of  the  governmental  organization  under 
the  Middle  Kingdom.  We  do  indeed  find  a  handful  of 
barons  still  wearing  their  old  feudal  titles,  but  they  re- 
sided at  Thebes  and  were  buried  there  (BAR,  II,  329, 
note  e).  All  Egypt  was  now  the  personal  estate  of  the 
Pharaoh  just  as  it  was  after  the  destruction  of  the 
Mamlukes  by  Mohammed  Ali  early  in  the  nineteenth 
century.  It  is  this  state  of  affairs  which  in  Hebrew 
tradition  was  represented  as  the  direct  result  of  Joseph's 
sagacity  (Gen.  xlvii:  19-20). 


PART  V 

THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


xin 


THE  NEW  STATE;   SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION 

183.  The  task  of  building  up  a  state,  which  now 
confronted  Ahmose  I,  differed  materially  from  the  re- 
organization accomplished  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Twelfth  Dynasty  by  Amenemhet  1.  The  latter  dealt 
with  social  and  political  factors  nc  longer  new  in  his 
time,  whereas  Ahmose  had  now  to  begin  with  the  erec- 
tion 01  a  fabric  of  government  ou^  of  elements  so  com- 
plete.'v  divorced  from  the  old  forms  as  to  have  lost  their 
identity^  being  now  in  a  state  of  total  flux.  The  course 
of  events,  which  culminated  in  the  expulsion  of  the 
Hyksos,  determined  for  Ahmose  the  form  which  the 
new  state  was  to  assume.  He  was  now  at  the  head  of  a 
strong  army,  effectively  organized  and  welded  together 
by  long  campaigns  and  sieges  protracted  through  years, 
during  which  he  had  been  both  general  in  the  field  and 
head  of  the  state.  The  character  of  the  government 
followed  involuntarily  out  of  these  conditions.  Eg}^pt 
became  a  military  state.  It  was  quite  natural  that  it 
should  remain  so,  in  spite  of  the  usually  unwarlike  char- 
acter of  the  Egyptian.  The  long  war  with  the  Hyksos 
had  now  educated  him  as  a  soldier,  the  large  army  of 
Ahmose  had  spent  years  in  Asia  and  had  even  been  for 
a  longer  or  shorter  period  among  the  rich  cities  of  Syria. 
Having  thoroughly  learned  war  and  having  perceived 
the  enormous  wealth  to  be  gained  by  it  in  Asia,  the 

193 


194  THE  EMPIRE    FIRST  PERIOD 


whole  land  was  roused  and  stirred  with  a  lust  of  con- 
questj  which  was  not  quenched  for  several  centuries. 
The  wealth,  the  rewards  and  the  promotion  open  to  the 
professional  soldier  were  a  constant  incentive  to  a 
military  career,  and  the  middle  classes,  otherwise  so  un- 
warlike,  now  entered  the  ranks  with  ardour.  In  the 
biographies  which  they  have  left  in  their  tombs  at 
Thebes  the  survivors  of  the  noble  class  narrate  with  the 
greatest  satisfaction  the  campaigns  which  they  went 
through  at  the  Pharaoh's  side,  and  the  honours  which 
he  bestowed  upon  them  (BAR,  II,  1-16;  17-25  et 
passim).  Many  a  campaign,  all  record  of  which  would 
have  been  irretrievably  lost,  has  thus  come  to  our 
knowledge  through  one  of  these  military  biographies, 
like  that  of  Ahmose,  son  oi  Ebana,  from  which  we  have 
quoted  (Ibid).  The  sons  of  the  Pharaoh,  who  in  the 
Old  Kingdom  held  administrative  offices,  are  now 
generals  in  the  army  (BAR,  II,  350;  362).  For  the  next 
century  and  a  half  the  story  of  the  achievements  of  the 
army  will  be  the  story  of  Egypt,  for  the  army  is  now 
the  dominant  force  and  the  chief  motive  power  in  the 
new  state.  In  organization  it  quite  surpassed  the 
militia  of  the  old  days,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  that 
it  was  now  a  standing  army.  It  was  organized  into  two 
grand  divisions,  one  in  the  Delta  and  the  other  in  the 
upper  country  (BAR,  III,  56).  In  Syria  it  had  learned 
tactics  and  proper  strategic  disposition  of  forces,  the 
earliest  of  which  we  know  anything  in  history.  We 
shall  now  find  partition  of  an  army  into  divisions,  we 
shall  hear  of  wings  and  centre,  we  shall  even  trace  a 
flank  movement  and  define  battle  lines.  All  this  is 
fundamentally  different  from  the  disorganized  plunder- 
ing expeditions  naively  reported  as  wars  by  the  monu- 
ments of  the  older  periods.    Besides  the  old  bow  and 


THE  NEW  STATE:  SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION  195 


spear,  the  troops  henceforth  carry  also  a  war  axe. 
They  have  learned  archery  fire  by  volleys  and  the 
dreaded  archers  of  Eg}'pt  now  gained  a  reputation  which 
followed  and  made  them  feared  even  in  classic  times. 
Bui  more  than  this,  the  Hyksos  having  brought  the 
horse  into  Egypt,  the  Egyptian  armies  now  for  the  first 
time  possessed  a  large  proportion  of  chariotry.  Cavalry 
in  the  modern  sense  of  the  term  was  not  employed. 
The  deft  craftsmen  of  Eg}'pt  soon  mastered  the  art  of 
chariot-making,  while  the  stables  of  the  Pharaoh  con- 
tained thousands  of  the  best  horses  to  be  had  in  Asia. 
In  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the  time,  the  Pharaoh 
was  accompanied  on  all  public  appearances  by  a  body- 
guard of  elite  troops  and  a  group  of  his  favourite  mili- 
tary officers. 

184.  This  new  state  is  revealed  to  us  more  clearly 
than  that  of  any  other  period  of  Egyptian  history  under 
native  dynasties.  The  supreme  position  occupied  by 
the  Pharaoh  meant  a  very  active  participation  in  the 
affairs  of  government.  He  was  accustomed  every 
morning  to  meet  the  vizier,  still  the  mainspring  of  the 
administration,  to  consult  with  him  on  all  the  interests 
of  the  country  and  all  the  current  business  which 
necessarily  came  under  his  eye.  Immediately  thereafter 
he  held  a  conference  with  the  chief  treasurer.  These 
two  men  headed  the  chief  departments  of  government: 
the  treasury  and  the  judiciary.  The  Pharaoh  s  office, 
in  which  they  made  their  daily  reports  to  him,  was  the 
central  organ  of  the  whole  government  where  all  its 
lines  converged.  Even  in  the  limited  number  of  such 
documents  preserved  to  us,  we  discern  the  vast  array  of 
detailed  questions  in  practical  administration  which  the 
busy  monarch  decided,  going  on  frequent  journeys  to 
examine  new  buildings  and  check  all  sorts  of  ofiicial 


196 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


abuses.  Besides  numerous  campaigns  in  Nubia  and 
Asia,  he  visited  the  quarries  and  mines  in  the  desert  oi 
inspected  the  desert  routes,  seeking  suitable  locations 
for  wells  and  stations.  The  official  cults  in  the  great 
temples,  too,  demanded  more  and  more  of  the  monarch's 
time  and  attention  as  feasts  and  ritual  were  multiplied. 
Early  in  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty,  however,  the  business 
of  government  and  the  duties  of  the  Pharaoh  had  so 
increased  that  he  appointed  a  second  vizier.  One  re- 
sided at  Thebes,  for  the  administration  of  the  South, 
from  the  cataract  as  far  as  the  nome  of  Siut;  while  the 
other,  who  had  charge  of  all  the  region  north  of  the 
latter  point,  lived  at  Heliopolis  (GIM). 

For  administrative  purposes  the  country  was  divided 
into  irregular  districts,  of  which  there  were  at  least 
twenty-seven  between  Siut  and  the  cataract,  and  the 
country  as  a  whole  must  have  been  divided  into  over 
twice  that  number.  The  head  of  government  in  the  old 
towns  still  bore  the  feudal  title  ''count,''  but  it  now 
indicated  solely  administrative  duties  and  might  better 
be  translated  '  mayor"  or  ''governor."  Each  of  the 
smaller  towns  had  a  "  to^Ti-ruler,"  but  in  the  other 
districts  there  were  only  recorders  and  scribes,  with  one 
of  their  number  at  their  head  (BAR,  II,  716-745). 

185.  The  great  object  of  government  was  to  make  the 
country  economically  strong  and  productive.  To  secure 
this  end,  its  lands,  now  chiefly  owned  by  the  crown,  were 
worked  by  the  king's  serfs,  controlled  by  his  officials,  or 
entrusted  by  him  as  permanent  and  indivisible  fiefs  to 
his  favourite  nobles,  his  partisans  and  relatives.  Divis- 
ible parcels  might  also  be  held  by  tenants  of  the  un- 
titled classes.  Both  classes  of  holdings  might  be  trans- 
ferred by  will  or  sale  in  much  the  same  way  as  if  the 
holder  actually  owned  the  land.    For  purposes  of 


THE  NEW  STATE:  SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION  197 


taxation  all  lands  and  other  property  of  the  crown, 
except  that  held  by  the  temples,  were  recorded  in  the 
tax-registers  of  the  White  House,  as  the  treasury  was 
still  called  (BAR,  II,  916, 1,  31).  On  the  basis  of  these, 
taxes  were  assessed.  They  were  still  collected  in 
naturalia:  cattle,  grain,  wine,  oil,  honey,  textiles  and 
the  like.  Besides  the  cattle-yards,  the  "granary" 
was  the  chief  sub-department  of  the  White  House,  and 
there  were  innumerable  other  magazines  for  the  storage 
of  its  receipts.  If  we  may  accept  Hebrew  tradition  as 
transmitted  in  the  story  of  Joseph,  such  taxes  comprised 
one  fifth  of  the  produce  of  the  land  (Gen.  xlvii,  23-27). 
The  chief  treasurer,  through  the  local  officials  above 
noticed,  collected  all  such  taxes ;  he  was  however,  under 
the  authority  of  the  vizier,  to  whom  he  made  a  report 
every  morning,  after  which  he  received  permission  to 
open  the  offices  and  magazines  for  the  day's  business 
(BAR,  II,  679).  The  collection  of  a  second  class  of 
revenue,  that  paid  by  the  local  officials  themselves  as  a 
tax  upon  their  offices,  was  exclusively  in  the  hands  of 
the  viziers.  The  southern  vizier  was  responsible  for 
all  the  officials  of  Upper  Egypt  in  his  jurisdiction  from 
Elephantine  to  Siut;  and  in  view  of  this  fact  the  other 
vizier  doubtless  bore  a  similar  responsibility  in  the 
North.  This  tax  on  the  officials  consisted  chiefly  of 
gold,  silver,  grain,  cattle  and  linen,  a  stately  sum  in  the 
annual  revenues.  AW  foreign  tribute  was  reported  to 
the  southern  vizier  at  Thebes.  AVe  can  unfortunately 
form  no  estimate  of  the  total  of  all  revenues.  Of  the 
royal  income  from  all  sources  in  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty 
the  southern  vizier  had  general  charge.  The  amount  of 
all  taxes  to  be  levied  and  the  distribution  of  the  revenue 
when  collected  were  determined  in  his  office,  where  a 
constant  balance  sheet  was  kept.    In  order  to  control 


198 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


both  income  and  outgo,  a  monthly  fiscal  report  was 
made  to  him  by  all  local  officials,  and  thus  the  southern 
vizier  was  able  to  furnish  the  king  from  month  to  month 
with  a  full  statement  of  prospective  resources  in  the 
royal  treasury  (BAR,  II,  708;  716-745;  709;  746-751; 
760  /.). 

186.  In  the  administration  of  justice  the  southern 
vizier  played  even  a  greater  role  than  in  the  treasury. 
Here  he  was  supreme.  The  old  magnates  of  the  South- 
ern Tens,  once  possessed  of  important  judicial  functions, 
have  sunk  to  a  mere  attendant  council  at  the  vizier's 
public  audiences,  where  they  seem  to  have  retained  not 
even  advisory  functions  (BAR,  II,  712).  The  six  "  great 
houses"  or  courts  of  justice  have  evidently  disappeared 
save  in  the  title  of  the  vizier.  All  petitioners  for  legal 
redress  applied  first  to  him  in  his  audience  hall ;  if  possi- 
ble in  person,  but  in  any  case  in  writing.  Every  morn- 
ing the  people  crowded  into  the  "hall  of  the  vizier," 
where  the  ushers  and  bailiffs  jostled  them  into  line  that 
they  might  "be  heard,"  in  order  of  arrival,  one  after 
another.  All  crimes  in  the  capital  city  were  denounced 
and  tried  before  him,  and  he  maintained  a  criminal 
docket  of  prisoners  awaiting  trial  or  punishment,  which 
strikingly  suggests  modern  documents  of  the  same  sort. 
All  this,  and  especially  the  land  cases,  demanded  rapid 
and  convenient  access  to  the  archives  of  the  land.  They 
were  therefore  all  filed  in  his  office.  No  one  might 
make  a  will  without  filing  it  in  the  "vizier's  hall." 
Copies  of  all  nome  archives,  boundary  records  and  all 
contracts  were  deposited  with  him  or  with  his  colleague 
in  the  North.  Every  petitioner  to  the  king  was  obliged 
to  hand  in  his  petition  in  writing  at  the  same  office 
(BAR,  II,  675;  714/.;  683;  688;  703;  691;  GIM). 

187.  Besides  the  vizier's  "hall,"  also  called  the 


THE  NEW  STATE:  SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION  199 


"great  council,"  there  were  local  councils  throughout  the 
land,  not  primarily  of  a  legal  character.  There  was,  as 
heretofore,  no  class  of  judges  with  exclusively  legal 
duties,  and  these  local  courts  were  merely  the  body  of 
administrative  officials  in  each  district,  who  were 
corporately  empowered  to  try  cases  with  full  compe- 
tence. They  were  the  ''great  men  of  the  town,"  or 
the  local  "council,"  and  acted  as  the  local  representa- 
tives of  the  "great  council."  The  number  of  these 
local  courts  is  entirely  uncertain,  but  the  most  important 
two  known  were  at  Thebes  and  Memphis.  At  Thebes 
its  composition  varied  from  day  to  day;  it  was  appointed 
by  the  vizier  or  the  Pharaoh,  according  to  the  nature 
of  the  case.  All  courts  were  largely  made  up  of 
priests.  They  did  not,  however,  always  enjoy  the 
best  reputation  among  the  people,  for  the  bribe  of  the 
rich  was  often  stronger  than  the  justice  of  the  poor  man's 
cause,  as  it  frequently  is  at  the  present  day  (BAR,  II, 
705;  IV,  423  /.;  SS;  PA,  II,  8,  6). 

The  law  to  which  the  poor  appealed  was  undoubtedly 
just.  The  vizier  was  obliged  to  keep  it  constantly  before 
him,  contained  in  forty  rolls  which  were  laid  out  before 
his  dais  at  all  his  public  sessions  where  they  were 
doubtless  accessible  to  all.  Unfortunately  the  code 
which  they  contained  has  perished,  but  of  its  justice  we 
have  ample  evidence.  Even  conspirators  against  the 
king's  life  were  not  summarily  put  to  death,  but  were 
handed  over  to  a  legally  constituted  court  to  be  properly 
tried,  and  condemned  only  when  found  guilty.  While 
the  great  body  of  this  law  was  undoubtedly  very  old, 
it  continued  to  grow;  thus  Haremhab's  regulations  were 
new  law  enacted  by  him.  The  social,  agricultural  and 
industrial  world  of  the  Nile-dwellers  under  the  Empire 
was  therefore  not  at  the  mercy  of  arbitrary  whim  on  the 


200 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


part  of  either  king  or  court,  but  was  governed  by  a  large 
b&dy  of  long  respected  law,  embodying  the  principles  of 
justice  and  humanity  (BAR,  II,  675;  712/.;  715;  III, 
51  /.;  65;  1,531;  SS). 

188.  The  southern  vizier  was  the  motive  power  be- 
hind the  organization  and  operation  of  this  ancient 
state.  We  recall  that  he  went  in  every  morning  and 
took  council  with  the  Pharaoh  on  the  affairs  of  the 
country;  and  the  only  other  check  upon  his  untram- 
melled control  of  the  state  was  a  law  constraining  him 
to  report  the  condition  of  his  office  to  the  chief  treasurer. 
His  office  was  the  Pharaoh's  means  of  communication 
with  the  local  authorities,  who  reported  to  him  in  writing 
on  the  first  day  of  each  season,  that  is,  three  times  a 
year.  It  is  in  his  office  that  we  discern  with  unmistak- 
able clearness  the  complete  contralization  of  all  local 
government  in  all  its  functions.  He  was  minister  of 
war  for  both  army  and  navy,  and  in  the  Eighteenth 
Dynasty  at  least,  ''when  the  king  was  with  the  army," 
he  conducted  the  administration  at  home.  He  had 
legal  control  of  the  temples  throughout  the  country, 
or,  as  the  Egyptian  put  it,  "he  established  laws  in  the 
temples  of  the  godsK)f  the  South  and  the  North,"  so  that 
he  was  minister  of  ecclesiastical  affairs.  He  exercised 
advisory  functions  in  all  the  offices  of  the  state;  so  long 
as  his  office  was  undivided  with  a  vizier  of  the  North 
he  was  grand  steward  of  all  Egypt,  and  there  was  no 
prime  function  of  the  state  which  did  not  operate  im- 
mediately or  secondarily  through  his  office.  He  was 
a  veritable  Joseph  and  it  must  have  been  this  office  which 
the  Hebrew  narrator  had  in  mind  as  that  to  which 
Joseph  was  appointed.  He  was  regarded  by  the  people 
as  their  great  protector  and  no  higher  praise  could  be 
proffered  to  Amon  when  addressed  by  a  worsliipprr  than 


THE  NEW  STATE:  SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION  201 


to  call  him  "  the  poor  man's  vizier  who  does  not  accept 
the  bribe  of  the  guilty"  (PA,  II,  6,  5  /.).  His  appoint- 
ment was  a  matter  of  such  importance  that  it  was  con- 
ducted by  the  king  himself,  and  the  instructions  given 
him  by  the  monarch  display  a  spirit  of  kindness  and 
humanity,  and  exhibit  an  appreciation  of  statecrait 
surprising  in  an  age  so  remote.  They  may  perhaps  be 
epitomized  in  the  Pharaoh's  own  words  on  that  occasion, 
"Lo,  the  true  dread  of  a  prince  is  to  do  justice.  ...  Be 
not  known  to  the  people  and  they  shall  not  say,  *  He  is 
only  a  man.'"  The  viziers  of  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty 
desired  the  reputation  of  hard  working,  conscientious 
officials,  who  took  the  greatest  pride  in  the  proper  ad- 
ministration of  the  office.  Several  of  them  have  left  a 
record  of  their  installation,  with  a  long  list  of  the  duties 
of  the  office,  engraved  and  painted  upon  the  walls  of 
their  Theban  tombs,  and  it  is  from  these  that  we  have 
dra^Ti  our  account  of  the  vizier  (BAR,  II,  671  jj.; 

mo  if.). 

189.  Such  was  the  government  of  the  imperial  age  in 
Egypt.  In  society  the  disappearance  of  the  landed 
nobility,  and  the  administration  of  the  local  districts 
by  a  vast  army  of  petty  officials  of  the  crown,  opened 
the  way  more  fully  than  in  the  Middle  Kingdom  for 
innumerable  careers  among  the  middle  class.  These 
opportunities  must  have  worked  a  gradual  change  in 
their  condition.  Thus  one  official  relates  his  obscure 
origin  thus:  "I  was  one  whose  family  was  poor  and 
whose  town  was  small,  but  the  king  recognized  me.  .  .  . 
He  exalted  me  more  than  the  royal  companions,  intro- 
ducing me  among  the  princes"  (Leyden,  Stela  V,  I). 
Such  possibilities  of  promotion  and  royal  favour  awaited 
success  in  local  administration,  for  in  some  local  office 
the  career  of  this  unknown  official  in  the  small  town 


202 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


must  have  begun.  There  thus  grew  up  a  new  official 
class.  As  there  was  no  longer  a  feudal  nobility,  the 
great  government  officials  became  the  nobles  of  the 
Empire,  surrounding  the  person  of  the  Pharaoh.  At 
the  bottom  the  masses  who  worked  the  fields  and  estates, 
the  serfs  of  the  Pharaoh,  formed  so  large  a  portion  of 
the  inhabitants,  that  the  Hebrew  scribe,  evidently 
writing  from  the  outside,  knew  only  this  class  of  society 
besides  the  priests  (Gen.  xlvii,  21).  These  lower  strata 
passed  away  and  left  little  or  no  trace,  but  the  middle 
class  was  now  able  to  erect  tombs  and  mortuary  stelae 
in  such  surprising  numbers  that  they  furnish  us  a  vast 
mass  of  materials  for  reconstructing  the  life  and  customs 
of  the  time.  The  soldier  in  the  standing  army  has 
now  also  become  a  social  class.  The  free  middle  class, 
liable  to  military  service,  are  called  "citizens  of  the 
army,"  a  term  already  known  in  the  Middle  Kingdom, 
but  now  very  common;  so  that  liability  to  military 
service  becomes  the  significant  designation  of  this  class 
of  society.  Politically  the  soldier's  influence  grows 
with  every  reign  and  he  soon  becomes  the  involuntary 
reliance  of  the  Pharaoh  in  the  execution  of  numerous 
civil  commissions  where  formerly  the  soldier  was  never 
employed  (BAR,  II,  274;  p.  165,  note  a;  681). 

190.  Side  by  side  with  the  soldier  appears  another 
new  and  powerful  class,  that  of  the  priesthood.  As  a 
natural  consequence  of  the  great  wealth  of  the  temples 
under  the  Empire,  the  priesthood  becomes  a  profession, 
no  longer  merely  an  incidental  office  held  by  a  layman, 
as  in  the  Old  and  Middle  Kingdoms.  All  the  priestly 
communities  were  now  for  the  first  time  united  in  a  great 
sacerdotal  organization  embracing  the  whole  land. 
The  head  of  the  state  temple  at  Thebes,  the  High 
Priest  of  Anion,  was  the  supreme  head  of  this  greater 


THE  NEW  STATE:  SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION  203 


body  also  and  his  power  was  thereby  increased  far 
beyond  that  of  his  older  rivals  at  Heliopolis  and  Mem- 
phis. The  temples  grew  into  vast  and  gorgeous 
palaces,  each  with  its  community  of  priests,  and  the 
high  priest  of  such  a  community  in  the  larger  centres 
was  a  veritable  sacerdotal  prince,  ultimately  wielding 
considerable  political  power. 

191.  The  triumph  of  a  Theban  family  had  brought 
with  it  the  supremacy  of  Amon.  Transformed  by  the 
solar  theology  into  Amon-Re,  and  with  some  attributes 
borrowed  from  his  neighbour,  Min  of  Coptos,  he  now 
rose  to  a  unique  and  supreme  position  of  unprecedented 
splendour  as  the  state  god.  But  the  fusion  of  the  old 
gods  had  not  deprived  Amon  alone  of  his  individuality, 
for  in  the  general  flux  almost  any  god  might  possess  the 
qualities  and  functions  of  the  others,  although  the 
dominant  position  was  still  occupied  by  the  sun-god. 

192.  The  mortuary  beliefs  of  the  time  are  the  out- 
growth of  tendencies  already  plainly  observable  in  the 
Middle  Kingdom  (see  p.  150).  The  magical  formulae 
by  which  the  dead  are  to  triumph  in  the  hereafter  be- 
come more  and  more  numerous,  so  that  it  is  no  longer 
possible  to  record  them  on  the  inside  of  the  coffin. 
They  must  be  -vsTitten  on  pap\Tus  and  the  roll  placed 
in  the  tomb.  As  the  selection  of  the  most  important 
of  these  texts  came  to  be  more  and  more  uniform,  the 
*'Book  of  the  Dead"  began  to  take  form.  But  magic 
achieved  still  more.  The  luxurious  lords  of  the  Empire 
no  longer  look  forward  with  pleasure  to  the  prospect  of 
plowing,  sowing  and  reaping  in  the  happy  fields  of  Yarn; 
a  magical  statuette  placed  in  the  tomb  arises  and  does 
the  work  otherwise  falling  upon  the  deceased.  Such 
"Ushebtis,"  or  "respondents,"  as  they  were  termed, 
were  now  placed  in  the  necropolis  by  scores  and  hun- 


204 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


dreds.  A  sacred  beetle  or  scarabseus  is  cut  from  stone 
and  inscribed  with  a  charm,  beginning  with  the  signifi- 
cant words,  ''O  my  neart,  rise  not  up  against  me  as  a 
witness;'*  and  thus  an  evil  life  is  masked  in  the  judg- 
ment hall  of  Osiris.  Likewise  the  rolls  of  the  Book  of 
the  Dead  containing,  besides  all  the  other  charms,  also 
the  scene  of  judgment,  and  especially  the  welcome  ver- 
dict of  acquital,  are  now  sold  by  the  priestly  scribes  to 
anyone  with  the  means  to  buy;  and  the  fortunate 
purchaser's  name  is  then  inserted  in  the  blanks  left  for 
this  purpose  throughout  the  document;  thus  securing 
for  himself  the  certainty  of  such  a  verdict,  before  it  was 
known  whose  name  should  be  so  inserted.  The  in- 
vention of  these  devices  by  the  priests  was  undoubtedly 
as  subversive  of  moral  progress  in  religion  as  the  sale  of 
indulgences  in  Luther's  time,  and  as  the  priestly  litera- 
ture on  the  hereafter  continued  to  grow,  it  stifled  the 
moral  aspirations  which  had  come  into  the  religion  of 
Egypt  with  the  ethical  influences  so  potent  in  the  Osiris- 
myth. 

193.  The  tomb  of  the  noble  consists  as  before  of 
chambers  hewn  in  the  face  of  the  cliff.  In  accordance 
with  the  prevailing  tendency  it  is  now  filled  with  imag- 
inary scenes  from  the  next  world,  while  at  the  same  time 
the  tomb  has  become  more  a  personal  monument  to  the 
deceased,  and  the  walls  of  the  chapel  bear  many  scenes 
from  his  life,  especially  from  his  ofiicial  career,  particu- 
larly as  a  record  of  the  honours  which  he  received  from 
the  king.  Thus  the  cliffs  opposite  Thebes,  honey- 
combed as  they  are  with  the  tombs  of  the  lords  of  the 
Empire,  contain  whole  chapters  of  the  life  and  history 
of  the  period,  with  which  we  shall  now  deal.  In  a 
solitary  valley  behind  these  cliffs,  as  we  shall  see,  the 
kings  now  likewise  excavate  their  tombs  in  the  limestone 


THE  NEW  STATE:  SOCIETY  AND  RELIGION  205 


walls  and  the  pyramid  is  no  longer  employed.  Vast 
galleries  are  pierced  into  the  mountain,  and,  passing 
from  hall  to  hall,  they  terminate  many  hundreds  of  feet 
from  the  entrance  in  a  large  chamber,  where  the  body 
of  the  king  is  laid  in  a  huge  stone  sarcophagus.  On  the 
western  plain  of  Thebes,  the  plain  east  of  this  valley,  as 
on  the  east  side  of  the  pyramid,  arose  the  splendid 
mortuary  temples  of  the  emperors,  of  which  we  shall 
later  have  occasion  to  say  more.  But  these  elaborate 
mortuary  customs  are  now  no  longer  confined  to  the 
Pharaoh  and  his  nobles;  the  necessity  for  some  equip- 
ment in  preparation  for  the  hereafter  is  now  felt  by  all 
classes.  The  manufacture  of  such  materials,  resulting 
from  the  gradual  extension  of  these  customs,  has  become 
an  industry;  the  embalmers,  undertakers  and  manufac- 
turers of  coffins  and  tomb  furniture  occupy  a  quarter  at 
Thebes,  forming  almost  a  guild  by  themselves,  as  they 
did  in  later  Greek  times. 

194.  Out  of  the  chaos  which  the  rule  of  foreign  lords 
had  produced,  the  new  state  and  the  new  conditions 
slowly  emerged  as  Ahmose  I  gradually  gained  leisure 
from  his  arduous  wars.  With  the  state  religion,  the 
foreign  dynasty  had  shown  no  sympathy  and  the 
temples  lay  wasted  and  deserted  in  many  places.  We 
find  Ahmose  therefore  in  his  twenty-second  year  under- 
taking the  repair  and  equipment  of  the  temples.  His 
greatest  work,  however,  remains  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty 
itself,  for  whose  brilliant  career  his  o^ti  achievements 
had  laid  so  firm  a  foundation.  Notwithstanding  his 
reign  of  at  least  twenty-two  years,  Ahmose  must  have 
died  young  (1557  b.  c.)  for  his  mother  was  still  living 
in  the  tenth  year  of  his  son  and  successor,  Amenhotep  I. 
By  him  he  was  buried  in  the  old  Eleventh  Dynasty 
cemetery  at  the  north  end  of  the  western  Theban  plain 


206  THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


in  a  masonry  tomb,  which  has  now  long  perished.  The 
famous  jewelry  of  his  mother,  stolen  from  her  neigh- 
bouring tomb  at  a  remote  date,  was  found  by  Mariette 
concealed  in  the  vicinity.  The  body  of  Ahmose  I,  as 
well  as  this  jewelry,  are  now  preserved  in  the  Museum 
at  Cairo  (BAR,  11,  26-8;  33  ff.;  49-51;  Masp.  Mom. 
voj,  534)e 


XIV 

THE  CONSOLIDATION  OF  THE  KINGDOM;  THE  RISE 
OF  THE  EMPIRE 

195.  The  time  was  not  yet  ripe  for  the  great  achieve- 
ments which  awaited  the  monarchs  of  the  new  dynasty 
in  Asia.  The  old  Nubian  dominion  of  the  Middle 
Kingdom,  from  the  first  to  the  second  cataract,  was  still 
far  from  final  pacification.  The  Troglodytes,  who 
later  harassed  the  Romans  on  this  same  frontier,  now 
possessed  a  leader,  and  Ahmose's  campaign  against 
them  had  not  been  lasting  in  its  effects.  Amenhotep  I, 
Ahmose's  successor,  was  therefore  obliged  to  invade 
Nubia  in  force.  He  captured  the  rebellious  leader,  and 
penetrated  to  the  old  landmarks  of  the  Middle  Kingdom 
frontier  at  the  second  cataract.  Northern  Nubia  was 
now  placed  under  the  administration  of  the  mayor  or 
governor  of  the  old  city  of  Nekhen,  which  now  became 
the  northern  limit  of  a  southern  administrative  district, 
including  all  the  territory  on  the  south  of  it,  controlled 
by  Egypt,  at  least  as  far  as  northern  Nubia,  or  Wawat. 
From  this  time  the  new  governor  was  able  to  go  north 
with  the  tribute  of  the  country  regularly  every  year 
(BAR,  II,  38  /.;  41,  47  /.). 

196.  The  wars  of  the  Hyksos  had  given  the  Libyans 
the  opportunity,  which  they  always  improved,  of  push- 
ing in  and  occupying  the  rich  lands  of  the  Delta,  and 
the  new  Pharaoh  was  now  suddenly  called  northward 

207 


208 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


to  expol  them.  This  mission  successfully  concluded, 
Amenhotep  was  at  liberty  to  turn  his  arms  toward  Asia. 
Unfortunately  we  have  no  records  of  his  Syrian  war,  but 
he  possibly  penetrated  far  to  the  north,  even  to  the 
Euphrates.  In  any  case  he  accomplished  enough  to 
enable  his  successor  to  boast  of  ruling  as  far  as  the 
Euphrates,  before  the  latter  had  himself  undertaken  any 
Asiatic  conquests  (BAR,  II,  39,  11.  27  /.;  42,  22;  73). 

197.  After  a  reign  of  at  least  ten  years  Amenhotep  I's 
richly  wrought  buildings  at  Thebes  were  interrupted  by 
his  death  (BAR,  11,45/.;  IV,  513;  B,I,  4,  No.  3, 164/.). 
Whether  he  left  a  son  entitled  to  the  throne  or  not,  we 
do  not  know.  His  successor,  Thutmose  I,  was  the  son 
of  a  woman  not  of  royal  blood.  Her  great  son  evidently 
owed  his  accession  to  the  kingship  to  his  marriage  with 
a  princess  of  the  old  line,  named  Ahmose,  through 
whom  he  could  assert  a  vahd  claim  to  the  throne.  It  is 
to  him  that  Egypt  owed  the  conquest  of  Upper  Nubia, 
over  four  hundred  miles  beyond  the  old  frontier  of  the 
Middle  Kingdom,  to  Napata  at  the  foot  of  the  Fourth 
cataract  where  the  southern  frontier  remained  for  nearly 
eight  hundred  years.  The  forward  movement  began 
already  in  the  king's  second  year.  In  the  battle  which 
probably  took  place  between  the  second  and  third 
cataracts,  the  Pharaoh  himself  transfixed  the  opposing 
?hief  with  his  lance.  He  now  pushed  on  through  the 
exceedingly  difficult  country  of  the  second  and  third 
cataracts,  where  his  scribes  and  officers  have  left  a  long 
trail  of  names  and  titles  scratched  on  the  rocks.  At  the 
Island  of  Tombos,  he  emerged  from  the  desolate  and 
precipitous  cataract  country  upon  the  wide  and  fertile 
valley  of  the  Dongola  Province  winding  along  a  wide 
curve  of  uninterrupted  river,  two  hundred  and  fifty 
miles  to  the  foot  of  the  fourth  cataract.    At  Tombos, 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


209 


therefore,  on  the  threshold  of  the  new  province  he  en- 
graved upon  the  rocks  five  triumphant  stelae,  one  of 
them  bearing  a  long  inscription.  These  are  the  earliest 
records  above  the  third  cataract.  Here  also  at  the 
head  of  the  third  cataract,  he  erected  a  fortress,  and 
garrisoned  it  with  troops  from  the  army  of  conquest. 
It  was  now  August  and  he  had  left  Egypt  in  February  or 
March.  AMien  he  repassed  the  first  cataract,  with  the 
Nubian  chief,  whom  he  had  slain,  hanging  head  down- 
ward at  the  prow  of  his  royal  barge,  he  had  been  absent 
over  a  year.  But  undoubtedly  he  had  reorganized  the 
^rountry  as  a  province  under  a  viceroy,  and  Thure,  the 
first  viceroy  of  Nubia,  now  cleared  the  ancient  canal  of 
stones  for  the  return  passage  of  the  king  through  the  first 
cataract  (BAR,  II,  54-60;  67-77;  80;  75;  84  1020-25). 

198.  Nubia  having  now  been  thoroughly  pacified, 
henceforth  the  Pharaoh  looks  northward.  The  char- 
acter of  the  country  along  the  eastern  end  of  the  Medi- 
terranean, which  we  may  call  Syria-Palestine,  is  not  such 
as  to  favor  the  gradual  amalgamation  of  small  and  petty 
states  into  one  great  nation,  as  that  process  took  place 
in  the  valleys  of  the  Nile  and  the  Euphrates.  The 
Orontes  valley,  stretching  northward  between  the  two 
Lebanons,  is  the  only  extensive  region  in  Syria-Palestine 
not  cut  up  by  the  hills  and  mountains,  where  a  strong 
kingdom  might  develop.  The  coast  is  completely 
isolated  from  the  interior  by  the  ridge  of  Lebanon,  while 
in  the  south,  Palestine  with  its  harbourless  coast  and  its 
large  tracts  of  unproductive  soil,  hardly  furnished  the 
economic  basis  for  the  development  of  a  strong  nation. 
Along  almost  its  entire  eastern  frontier,  Syria-Palestine 
merges  into  the  northern  extension  of  the  Arabian  des- 
ert, save  in  the  extreme  north,  where  the  valley  of  the 
Orontes  and  that  of  the  Euphrates  almost  blend. 


210  THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


199.  The  country  was  settled  chiefly  by  Semites,  the 
descendants  of  an  early  overflow  of  population  from  the 
deserts  of  Arabia,  such  as  has  occurred  in  historic  times 
over  and  over  again.  In  the  north  these  were  Aramae- 
ans, while  in  the  south  they  may  be  most  conveniently 
designated  as  Canaanites.  In  general  these  peoples 
showed  little  genius  for  government,  and  were  totally 
without  any  motives  for  consolidation.  Divided,  more- 
over, by  the  physical  conformation  of  the  country,  they 
were  organized  into  numerous  city-kingdoms,  each 
having  not  only  its  own  kinglet,  but  also  its  own  god, 
a  local  ba'al  (Baal)  or  ''lord,"  with  whom  was  often 
associated  a  ba'lat  or  ''lady,"  a  goddess  like  her  of 
Byblos.  These  miniature  kingdoms  were  embroiled  in 
frequent  wars  with  one  another,  each  dynast  endeav- 
ouring to  unseat  his  neighbour  and  absorb  the  latter's 
territory  and  revenues.  Exceeding  all  the  others  in 
size  was  the  kingdom  of  Kadesh,  in  the  Orontes  valley, 
in  which  we  should,  in  the  author^s  opinion,  recognize 
the  nucleus  of  the  Hyksos  empire  as  already  indicated 
(pp.  180  /.).  We  shall  now  discern  it  for  two  genera- 
tions, struggling  desperately  to  maintain  its  indepen- 
dence, and  only  crushed  at  last  by  tw^enty  years  of 
warfare  under  Thutmose  III. 

200.  Some  of  these  kingdoms  possessed  a  high  degree 
of  civilization.  Masters  of  the  art  of  metal-working 
they  made  metal  vessels,  weapons  and  chariots  a  great 
industry.  Woolen  textiles  of  the  finest  dye,  rich  and 
sumptuous  in  design,  issued  from  their  looms.  These 
Semites  were  already  inveterate  traders,  and  an  ani- 
mated commerce  was  passing  from  town  to  town,  where 
the  market  place  was  a  busy  scene  of  traflBc  as  it  is  to- 
day. On  the  scanty  shoreward  slopes  of  Lebanon  some 
of  them,  crossing  from  the  interior,  had  early  gained 


MAP  II.    THE  ASIATIC  EMPIRE  OF  EGYPT. 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


211 


a  footing,  to  become  the  Phoenicians  of  historic  times. 
They  rapidly  subdued  the  sea  and  soon  developed  into 
hardy  mariners.  In  every  favourable  harbour  they 
estabhshed  their  colonies,  in  Cyprus  and  Rhodes,  along 
the  southern  litoral  of  Asia  Minor,  throughout  the 
.Egean,  and  here  and  there  on  the  mainland  of  Greece. 
Everywhere  throughout  the  regions  which  they  reached, 
their  wares  were  prominent  in  the  markets.  As  their 
wealth  increased,  every  harbour  along  the  Phoenician 
coast  was  the  seat  of  a  rich  and  flourishing  city,  among 
which  Tyre,  Sidon,  Byblos,  Arvad  and  Simyra  were  the 
greatest,  each  being  the  seat  of  a  dynasty.  Thus  it  was 
that  in  the  Homeric  poems  the  Phoenician  merchant  and 
his  wares  were  proverbial,  for  the  commercial  and  mari- 
time power  enjoyed  by  the  Phoenicians  at  the  rise  of  the 
Eg\^ptian  Empire  continued  into  Homeric  times  and  later. 

201.  The  civilization  which  they  found  in  the  northern 
Mediterranean  was  that  of  the  jMycensean  age.  Its 
people  are  termed  by  the  Egyptian  monuments  Keftyew, 
and  so  regular  was  the  traffic  with  these  regions  that  the 
Phoenician  craft  plying  on  these  voyages  were  known  as 
"Keftyew  ships"  "(BAR,  II,  492).  All  this  northern 
region  was  kno\sm  to  the  Eg}'ptians  as  the  "  Isles  of  the 
Sea,"  for  having  no  acquaintance  with  the  interior  of 
Asia  ]\Iinor,  they  supposed  it  to  be  but  island  coasts, 
like  those  of  the  ^Egean. 

202.  IMuch  more  highly  organized  than  the  neigh- 
bouring peoples  of  Asia,  the  mature  civilization  of  the 
mighty  kingdom  on  the  Nile  had  from  time  immemorial 
exerted  a  powerful  influence  upon  the  politically  feeble 
states  there.  There  was  little  or  no  native  art  among 
these  peoples  of  the  western  Semitic  world,  but  they 
were  skilful  imitators,  and  the  products  which  their 
fleets  marketed  throughout  the  eastern  Mediterranean, 


212 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


if  not  original  Egyptian  work,  were  therefore  tinctured 
through  and  through  with  Egyptian  elements.  In  these 
Phoenician  galleys  the  material  civilization  of  the  Orient 
was  being  gradually  disseminated  through  southern 
Europe  and  the  west.  Babylonian  influences,  while  not 
so  noticeable  in  the  art  of  Syria-Palestine,  were  never- 
theless sufficiently  powerful  to  have  introduced  there 
the  cuneiform  system  of  writing,  even  among  the  non- 
Semitic  Hittites.  Thus  Syria-Palestine  became  common 
ground,  where  the  forces  of  civilization  from  the  Nile  and 
the  Euphrates  mingled  at  first  in  peaceful  rivalry,  but 
ultimately  to  meet  upon  the  battlefield.  The  historical 
significance  of  this  region  is  found  in  the  inevitable  strug- 
gle for  its  possession  between  the  kingdom  of  the  Nile 
on  the  one  hand  and  those  of  the  Tigro-Euphrates  valley 
and  Asia  Minor  on  the  other.  It  was  in  the  midst  of 
this  struggle  that  Hebrew  national  history  fell,  and  in 
its  relentless  course  the  Hebrew  monarchies  perished. 

203.  Other  non-Semitic  peoples  were  also  beginning 
to  appear  on  Egypt's  northern  horizon.  A  group  of 
warriors  of  Iran,  now  appearing  for  the  first  time  in 
history,  had  by  1500  B.  c.  pushed  westward  to  the 
upper  Euphrates  and  established  an  Aryan  dynasty, 
ruling  the  kingdom  of  Mitanni  in  the  great  westward 
bend  of  the  river,  where  it  approaches  most  closely  to 
the  Mediterranean.  It  was  the  earliest  and  western- 
most outpost  of  the  Aryan  race.  They  formed  a  power- 
ful and  cultivated  state,  which,  planted  thus  on  the  road 
leading  westward  from  Babylon  along  the  Euphrates, 
effectively  cut  off  the  latter  from  her  profitable  western 
trade,  and  doubtless  had  much  to  do  with  the  decline  in 
which  Babylon,  under  her  foreign  Kassite  dynasty,  now 
found  herself.  Everything  thus  conspired  to  favour  the 
permanence  of  Egyptian  power  in  Asia  (MAAG). 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


213 


204.  Under  these  conditions  Thutmose  I  prepared  to 
quell  the  perpetual  revolt  in  Syria  and  bring  it  into  such 
complete  subjection  as  he  had  achieved  in  Nubia. 
Without  serious  opposition,  the  Pharaoh  reached 
Naharin,  or  the  land  of  the  rivers,"  as  the  name  signi- 
fies, which  was  the  designation  of  the  country  from  the 
Orontes  to  the  Euphrates  and  beyond,  merging  into 
Asia  Minor.  The  battle  resulted  in  a  great  slaughter  of 
the  Asiatics,  followed  by  the  capture  of  large  numbers 
of  prisorxcrs.  Somewhere  along  the  Euphrates  at  its 
nearest  approach  to  the  Mediterranean,  Thutmose  now 
erected  a  stone  boundary-tablet,  marking  the  northern 
and  at  this  point  the  eastern  limit  of  his  Syrian  posses- 
sions. Two  Pharaohs  had  now  seen  the  Euphrates, 
the  Syrian  dynasts  were  fully  impressed  with  the  power 
of  Egypt,  and  their  tribute,  together  with  that  of  the 
Beduin  and  other  inhabitants  of  Palestine,  began  to 
flow  into  the  Egyptian  treasury.  Thus  Thutmose  I 
was  able  to  begin  the  restoration  of  the  temples  so 
neglected  since  the  time  of  the  Hyksos.  The  modest 
old  temple  of  the  INIiddle  Kingdom  monarchs  at  Thebes 
was  no  longer  in  keeping  with  the  Pharaoh's  increasing 
wealth  and  pomp.  His  chief  architect,  Ineni,  was 
therefore  commissioned  to  erect  two  massive  pylons, 
or  towered  gateways,  in  front  of  the  old  Amon-temple, 
and  between  these  a  columned  hall,  which  was  later  to 
be  intimately  identified  with  the  family  history  of  the 
dynasty  (BAR;  II,  81;  85;  478;  98;  101;  103  /.; 
92-97). 


XV 


THE  FEUD  OF  THE  THUTMOSIDS  AND  THE  REIGN  OP 

QUEEN  HATSHEPSUT 

205.  How  long  Thutmose  I's  Asiatic  war  may  have 
occupied  him,  we  do  not  now  know,  but  at  about  the 
time  of  his  thirty  years'  jubilee — the  30th  anniversary 
of  his  appointment  to  the  heu'ship  of  the  throne — his 
claim  upon  it  was  probably  weakened  by  the  death  of 
his  queen,  Ahmose,  through  whom  alone  he  had  any 
valid  title  to  the  crown.  She  was  a  descendant  of  the 
old  Theban  princes  who  had  expelled  the  Hyksos,  and 
there  was  a  strong  party  who  regarded  the  blood  of  this 
line  as  alone  entitled  to  royal  honours.  Her  only  sur- 
viving child  was  a  daughter,  Makere-Hatshepsut,  and 
so  strong  was  the  party  of  legitimacy,  that  they  had 
forced  the  king,  years  before,  at  about  the  middle  of  his 
reign,  to  proclaim  her  his  successor,  in  spite  of  the 
general  disinclination  to  submit  to  the  rule  of  a  queen. 
Among  other  children,  Thutmose  I  had  also  two  sons 
by  other  queens :  one,  who  afterward  became  Thutmose 
II,  was  the  son  of  a  princess  Mutnofret;  while  the  other, 
later  Thutmose  III,  had  been  born  to  the  king  by  an 
obscure  concubine  named  Isis.  The  close  of  Thutmose 
I's  reign  is  involved  in  deep  obscurity,  and  the  following 
reconstruction  is  not  T;\dthout  its  difficulties.  When  the 
light  finally  breaks,  Thutmose  III  is  on  the  throne  for  a 
long  reign,  the  beginning  of  which  had  been  interrupted 

214 


FELT)  OF  THE  THUTMOSIDS 


215 


for  a  short  time  by  the  ephemeral  rule  of  Thutmose  II. 
Thus,  although  Thutmose  Ill's  reign  really  began  be- 
fore that  of  Thutmose  II,  seven-eighths  of  it  falls  after 
Thutmose  IFs  death,  and  the  numbering  of  the  two 
kings  is  most  convenient  as  it  is.  As  a  young  prince  of 
no  prospects,  Thutmose  III  had  been  placed  in  the 
Karnak  temple  as  a  priest  with  the  rank  of  prophet. 
Meantime  he  had  in  some  way  gained  the  hand  of  the 
beautiful  and  gifted  Hatshepsut,  the  sole  prmcess  of  the 
old  line.  He  now  had  a  claim  upon  the  throne,  by 
inheritance  through  his  wife.  To  this  legal  right  the 
priesthood  of  Amon,  who  supported  him,  agreed  to  add 
that  of  divine  sanction,  and  under  the  most  dramatic 
circumstances  secured  his  call  to  the  kingship  by  the 
god  himself  during  state  ceremonies  in  the  temple  hall 
of  Thutmose  I.  Thutmose  Ill's  five-fold  name  and 
titulary  were  immediately  published,  and  on  the  third 
of  May,  in  the  year  1501,  b.  c,  he  suddenly  stepped 
from  the  duties  of  an  obscure  prophet  of  Amon  into 
the  palace  of  the  Pharaohs  (BAR,  U,  105;  86-i>,  64, 
1.  11;  307;  128-136;  138-148). 

206.  Thutmose  I  was  evidently  not  regarded  as  a 
source  of  serious  danger,  for  he  was  permitted  to  live  on. 
Thutmose  III  early  shook  off  the  party  of  legitimacy. 
Indeed  he  allowed  Hatshepsut  no  more  honourable  title 
than  "great  or  chief  royal  w^ife."  But  the  party  of 
legitimacy  was  not  to  be  so  easily  put  off.  As  a  result 
of  their  efforts  Thutmose  III  was  forced  to  acknowledge 
the  coregency  of  his  queen  and  actually  to  give  her  a 
share  in  the  government.  Before  long  her  partisans  had 
become  so  strong  that  the  king  was  seriously  hampered, 
and  eventually  even  thrust  into  the  background,  and 
the  conventions  of  the  court  were  all  warped  and  dis- 
torted to  suit  the  rule  of  a  woman.    Hardly  had  sh*- 


216 


THE  EMPIRE-  FIRST  PERIOD 


begun  her  independent  works  and  royal  monuments, 
especially  the  great  temple  of  Der  el-Bahri,  when  the 
priestly  party  of  Thutmose  III  and  the  party  of  legit- 
imacy fell  victims  of  a  third  party,  that  of  Thutmose 
IT,  who,  allying  himself  with  the  old  dethroned  king, 
Thutmose  I,  succeeded  in  thrusting  aside  Thutmose  III 
and  Hatshepsut  and  seizing  the  crown.  Then  Thut- 
mose I  and  II,  father  and  son,  began  a  bitter  perse- 
cution of  the  memory  of  Hatshepsut,  cutting  out  her 
name  on  the  monuments  and  placing  both  their  own 
over  it  wherever  they  could  find  it. 

207.  News  of  the  enmities  within  the  royal  house  had 
probably  now  reached  Nubia,  and  on  the  very  day  of 
Thutmose  IFs  accession,  the  report  of  a  serious  out- 
break there  was  handed  to  him.  One  of  his  com- 
manders quelled  the  rising,  however,  and  another 
insurrection  in  southern  Palestine  was  also  successfully 
put  down.  At  this  juncture  it  is  probable  that  the  death 
of  the  aged  Thutmose  I  so  weakened  the  position  of  the 
feeble  and  diseased  Thutmose  II  that  he  made  common 
cause  with  Thutmose  III,  then  apparently  living  in 
retirement,  but  of  course  secretly  seeking  to  reinstate 
himself.  In  any  case  we  find  them  together  for  a  brief 
coregency,  which  was  terminated  by  the  death  of  Thut- 
mose II,  after  a  reign  of  not  more  than  three  years  at 
most  (Note  IV;  BAR,  II,  119-125;  593-5;  MMR,  547). 

208.  Thutmose  III  thus  held  the  throne  again, 
although  the  partisans  of  Hatshepsut  forced  him  to  a 
compromise,  by  which  the  queen  w^as  recognized  as  co- 
regent.  Matters  did  not  stop  here;  her  party  was  so 
powerful,  that,  although  they  were  unable  to  dispose  of 
Thutmose  III  entirely,  he  was  again  relegated  to  the 
background,  while  the  queen  played  the  leading  role 
in  the  state.    Both  she  and  Thutmose  III  numbered  the 


FEUD  OF  THE  THUTMOSIDS:   HATSHEPSUT  217 


years  of  their  joint  reign  from  the  first  accession  of 
Thutmose  III,  as  if  it  had  never  been  interrupted  by  the 
short  reign  of  Thutmose  11.  The  queen  now  entered 
upon  an  aggressive  career  as  the  first  great  woman  in 
history  of  whom  we  are  informed.  Her  partisans  had 
now  installed  themselves  in  the-  most  powerful  offices, 
from  that  of  the  vizier,  chief  treasurer,  chief  architect 
and  High  Priest  of  Amon  downward.  The  whole 
machinery  of  the  state  was  thus  in  the  hands  of  these 
partisans  of  the  queen.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  the 
fortunes,  and  probably  the  lives  of  these  men  were 
identified  with  the  success  and  the  dominance  of  Hat- 
shepsut ;  they  therefore  took  good  care  that  her  position 
should  be  maintained.  In  every  way  they  were  at  great 
pains  to  show  that  the  queen  had  been  destined  for  the 
throne  by  the  gods  from  the  beginning.  In  her  temple 
at  Der  el-Bahri,  where  work  was  now  actively  resumed, 
they  had  sculptured  on  the  walls  a  long  series  of  reliefs 
showing  the  birth  of  the  queen.  Here  all  the  details  of 
the  old  state  fiction  that  the  sovereign  should  be  the 
bodily  child  of  the  sun-god  were  elaborately  depicted. 
The  artist  who  did  the  work  followed  the  current 
tradition  so  closely  that  the  new-born  child  appears  as 
a  hoy,  showing  how  the  introduction  of  a  woman  into 
the  situation  was  wrenching  the  inherited  forms. 
Thutmose  I  was  depicted  appointing  and  acknowledging 
iier  as  queen,  or  praying  for  a  prosperous  reign  for  his 
daughter.  With  such  devices  as  these  it  was  sought 
to  overcome  the  prejudice  against  a  queen  upon  the 
throne  of  the  Pharaohs  (BAR,  II,  341;  344;  363  ff.; 
348;  388  jf.;  369  ff.;  290;  187  jj.]  198;  215;  237,- 
11.  15-16;  243  fj.). 

209.  Hatshepsut's  first  enterprise  was,  as  we  have 
intimated,  to  continue  the  building  of  her  magnificent 


21S 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


temple  against  the  western  cliffs  at  Thebes,  where  her 
father  and  brother  had  inserted  their  names  over  hers. 
The  building  was  in  design  quite  unlike  the  great 
temples  of  the  age.  It  resembled  the  little  terraced 
temple  of  Nibhepetre-Mentuhotep  in  a  neighbouring 
bay  of  the  cliffs.  In  a  series  of  three  colonnaded  ter- 
races it  rose  from  the  plain  to  the  level  of  an  elevated 
court,  flanked  by  the  massive  yellow  cliffs,  into  which 
the  holy  of  holies  was  cut.  The  queen  found  especial 
pleasure  in  the  design  of  the  temple,  seeing  in  it  a 
paradise  of  Amon,  and  conceived  its  terraces  as  the 
'^myrrh-terraces"  of  Punt,  the  original  home  of  the 
gods.  To  carry  out  the  design  fully  it  was  further 
necessary  to  plant  the  terraces  with  the  myrrh  trees 
from  Punt,  and  resuming  the  Red  Sea  traffic  interrupted 
by  the  Hyksos  wars,  she  dispatched  a  fleet  to  Punt  to 
secure  the  myrrh  trees  (BAR,  II,  351, 11.  6  /.;  375;  295; 
287;  285,  11.  5-6;  288).  It  was  the  largest  expedition 
thither  of  which  we  know.  Passing  from  the  Nile  to 
the  Red  Sea  by  means  of  a  canal  in  the  eastern  Delta, 
the  fleet  reached  Punt  in  safety.  Besides  Egyptian 
merchandise  they  carried  with  them  a  statue  of  the 
queen,  which  they  erected  in  Punt  (AZ,  42,  91  ff.). 
After  a  fair  return  voyage,  and  without  mishap,  the 
fleet  of  fine  vessels  finally  moored  again  at  the  docks 
of  Thebes.  Probably  the  Thebans  had  never  before 
been  diverted  by  such  a  sight  as  now  greeted  them,  when 
the  motley  array  of  Puntites  and  the  strange  products 
of  their  far-off  country  passed  through  the  streets  to  the 
queen^s  palace,  where  the  Egyptian  commander  pre- 
sented them  to  her  majesty.  Having  planted  the  trees 
in  the  temple,  the  queen  boasted,  '*It  was  done.  .  .  . 
I  have  made  for  him  a  Punt  in  his  garden,  just  as  he 
commanded  me.  ...  It  is  large  enough  for  him  to  walk 


FEUD  OF  THE  THUTMOSIDS:  HATSHEPSUT  219 


abroad  in  it."  Thus  the  splendid  temple  was  made 
a  terraced  myrrh-garden  for  the  god,  though  the 
energetic  queen  was  obliged  to  send  to  the  end  of  the 
known  world  to  do  this  for  him.  She  had  all  the  inci- 
dents of  the  remarkable  expedition  recorded  in  a  series 
of  splendid  reliefs  on  the  upper  terrace,  where  they 
stiU  form  one  of  the  great  beauties  of  her  temple  (BAR, 
11,290;  252  /.;  292;  254;  257;  259;  246-295). 

210.  This  unique  temple  was  in  its  function  the  cul- 
mination of  a  new  development  in  the  arrangement  and 
architecture  of  the  royal  tomb.  As  we  have  seen,  the 
Pharaoh  had  gradually  abandoned  the  construction  of  a 
pyramid,  and  he  now,  like  his  nobles,  excavated  a 
cliff-tomb  with  the  mortuary  temple  against  the  face  of 
the  cliff  before  it.  Probably  for  purposes  of  safety 
Thutmose  I  then  took  the  radical  step  of  separating  the 
cliff-tomb  from  the  mortuary  chapel  before  it.  The 
chapel  was  left  upon  the  plain  at  the  foot  of  the  western 
cliffs,  but  the  burial  chamber,  with  the  passage  leading 
to  it  was  hewn  into  the  rocky  wall  of  a  wild  and  desolate 
valley  lying  behind  the  cliffs,  some  two  miles  in  a 
direct  line  westward  from  the  river,  and  accessible  only 
by  a  long  detour  northward,  involving  nearly  twice  that 
distance.  It  is  evident  that  the  exact  spot  where  the 
king's  body  was  entombed  was  intended  to  be  kept 
secret,  that  all  possibility  of  robbing  the  royal  burial 
might  be  precluded.  The  new  arrangement  was  such 
that  the  sepulchre,  as  in  pyramid  days,  was  still  behind 
the  chapel  or  temple,  which  thus  continued  to  be  on  the 
east  of  the  tomb  as  before,  although  the  two  were  now 
separated  by  the  intervening  cliffs.  The  valley,  now 
known  as  the  "Valley  of  the  Kings'  Tombs,"  rapidly 
filled  with  the  vast  excavations  of  Thutmose  I's 
successors.    It  continued  to  be  the  cemetery  of  the 


220 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


Eighteenth,  Nineteenth  and  Twentieth  Dynasties,  and 
over  forty  tombs  of  the  Theban  kings  were  excavated 
there.  Forty-two  now  accessible  form  one  of  the  won- 
ders which  attract  the  modern  Nile-tourists  to  Thebes, 
and  Strabo  speaks  of  forty  which  were  worthy  to  be 
visited  in  his  time.  Hatshepsut's  terraced  sanctuary 
was  therefore  her  mortuary  temple,  dedicated  also  tc 
her  father.  As  the  tombs  multiplied  in  the  valley 
behind,  there  rose  upon  the  plain  before  it  temple  after 
temple  endowed  for  the  mortuary  service  of  the  de- 
parted gods,  the  emperors  who  had  once  ruled  Egypt. 
Hatshepsut's  tomb  has  in  recent  times  been  discovered 
behind  her  terraced  temple,  and  that  of  her  father  is 
near  by  (BAR,  II,  513;  106;  552;  389). 

211.  Meanwhile  Hatshepsut  was  receiving  tribute 
from  her  wide  empire,  extending  from  the  upper  cata- 
racts of  the  Nile  to  the  Euphrates.  Evidently  no  serious 
trouble  in  Asia  had  as  yet  resulted  from  the  fact  that 
there  was  no  longer  a  warrior  upon  the  throne  of  the 
Pharaohs.  This  energetic  woman  therefore  began  to 
employ  her  new  wealth  in  the  restoration  of  the  old 
temples,  which,  although  two  generations  had  elapsed, 
had  not  yet  recovered  from  the  neglect  which  they  had 
suffered  under  the  Hyksos  (BAR,  II,  321 ;  296  ^. ;  303). 

212.  It  was  now  seven  or  eight  years  since  she  and 
Thutmoss  III  had  regained  the  throne,  and  fifteen  years 
since  they  had  first  seized  it.  Thutmose  III  had  never 
been  appointed  heir  to  the  succession,  but  his  queen  had 
enjoyed  that  honour,  and  at  the  thirtieth  anniversary  of 
her  appointment  she  celebrated  her  jubilee  by  the 
erection  of  a  pair  of  obelisks,  which  were  the  customary 
memorial  of  such  jubilees.  The  queen  chose  an 
extraordinary  location  for  these  monuments,  namely,  the 
very  colonnaded  hall  of  the  Karnak  temple  erected  by 


FEUD  OF  THE  THUTMOSIDS:   HATSHEPSUT  221 


her  father,  where  her  husband  Thutmose  III  had  been 
named  king  by  oracle  of  Amon;  although  this  neces- 
sitated the  removal  of  many  of  her  father's  cedar 
columns,  besides,  of  course,  unroofing  the  hall.  Sumpt- 
uously overlaid  with  gold-silver  alloy,  they  towered  so 
high  above  the  dismantled  hall  of  Thutmose  I  that  the 
queen  recorded  a  long  oath,  swearing  by  all  the  gods 
that  they  were  each  of  one  block.  They  were  indeed 
the  tallest  shafts  ever  erected  in  Egypt  up  to  that  time, 
being  ninety  seven  and  a  half  feet  high  and  w^eighing 
nearly  three  hundred  and  fifty  tons  each.  Nevertheless 
they  had  been  quarried  at  the  first  cataract  in  only 
seven  months.  One  of  them  still  stands,  an  object  of 
constant  admiration  to  the  modern  visitor  at  Thebes. 
Two,  and  possibly  four,  more  of  the  queen's  obelisks 
have  perished  (BAR  II,  317,  11.  6  /.;  318;  376,  1.  28; 
319,  1.  3;  377,  11.  36-38;  315;  304-336;  322  ff.). 

213.  With  these  splendid  works  at  home  Hatshepsut's 
power,  or  that  of  her  party,  was  drawing  to  a  close.  In 
Sinai  her  mining  works  went  on  until  her  twentieth  year. 
Some  time  between  this  date  and  the  close  of  the  year 
twenty-one,  when  we  find  Thutmose  III  ruling  alone, 
the  great  queen  must  have  died.  Great  though  she  was, 
her  rule  was  a  distinct  misfortune,  falling,  as  it  did, 
at  a  time  when  Eg}^pt's  power  in  Asia  had  not  yet  been 
seriously  tested,  and  Syria  was  only  too  ready  to  revolt. 
Thutmose  III  was  not  chivalrous  in  his  treatment  of 
her  when  she  was  gone.  He  had  suffered  too  much. 
Burning  to  lead  his  forces  into  Asia,  he  had  been  assigned 
to  puerile  temple  functions  or  his  restless  energies  were 
spent  on  building  his  mortuary  temple  of  the  western 
plain  of  Thebes.  Around  her  obelisks  in  her  father's 
hall  at  Karnak  he  now  had  a  masonry  sheathing  built, 
covering  her  name  and  the  record  of  her  erection  of  them 


222  THE  EMPIRE.  FIRST  PERIOD 


on  the  base.  Everywhere  from  the  cataracts  to  the 
Delta,  on  the  walls  of  all  buildings  both  her  figure  and 
her  name  have  been  hacked  out.  Her  partisans  doubt- 
less all  fled.  If  not  they  must  have  met  short  shrift. 
In  all  the  records  of  the  time,  and  even  in  their  tombs 
and  on  their  statues,  their  names  and  their  figures  were 
ruthlessly  chiselled  away.  And  these  mutilated  monu- 
ments stand  to  this  day,  grim  witnesses  of  the  great 
king's  vengeance.  But  in  Hatshepsut's  splendid  temple 
her  fame  still  lives,  and  the  masonry  around  her  Karnak 
obelisk  has  fallen  down,  displaying  her  name  and 
records,  and  exposing  the  gigantic  shaft,  to  proclaim  to 
the  modern  world  the  greatness  of  Hatshepsut  (BAR,  II; 
337;  338,  note  /;  348;  PPS,  p.  19). 


XVI 


THE  CONSOLIDATION  OF  THE  EMPIRE:  THE  WARS 

OF  THUTMOSE  III 

214.  In  the  year  fifteen  Hatshepsut  and  Thutmose  III 
still  controlled  their  Asiatic  dependencies  as  far  north 
as  the  Lebanon.  From  that  time  mi  til  we  find  him 
marching  into  Asia,  late  in  the  year  twenty-two,  we  are 
not  informed  of  what  took  place  there;  but  the  condition 
which  then  confronted  him,  and  the  course  of  his  subse- 
quent campaigns,  makes  it  evident  how  matters  had 
gone  wdth  Egyptian  supremacy  during  the  interim. 
Not  having  seen  an  Egyptian  army  for  many  years,  the 
Syrian  dynasts  grew  continually  more  restless,  and 
finding  that  their  boldness  called  forth  no  response 
from  the  Pharaoh,  the  king  of  Kadesh  had  stirred  all  the 
city-kings  of  northern  Palestine  and  Syria  to  accept  his 
leadership  in  a  great  coalition,  in  which  they  at  last  felt 
themselves  strong  enough  to  begin  open  revolt.  Kadesh 
thus  assumed  its  head  w^ith  a  power  in  which  we  should 
evidently  recognize  the  surviving  prestige  of  her  old- 
time  more  extended  suzerainty.  Only  southern  Pales- 
tine held  aloof  and  remained  true  to  the  Pharaoh.  Not 
only  were  "all  the  allied  countries  of  Zahi,"  or  western 
Syria,  in  open  rebeUion  against  the  Pharaoh,  but  it 
is  also  evident  that  the  great  kingdom  of  Mitanni,  on 
the  east  of  the  Euphrates,  had  done  all  in  her  power  to 
encourage  the  rebellion  and  to  support  it  when  once  in 

223 


224 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


progress.  Against  such  formidable  resources  as  these, 
then,  Thutmose  III  was  summoned  to  contend,  and  no 
Pharaoh  before  his  time  had  ever  undertaken  so  great 
a  task.  In  what  condition  the  long  unused  Egyptian 
army  may  have  been,  or  how  long  it  took  Thutmose  to 
reorganize  and  prepare  it  for  service,  we  have  no  means 
of  knowing.  The  armies  of  the  early  Orient  were  not 
large,  and  it  is  not  probable  that  any  Pharaoh  ever  in- 
vaded Asia  with  more  than  twenty-five  or  thirty  thousand 
men,  while  less  than  twenty  thousand  is  probably  nearer 
the  usual  figure  (BAR,  II,  137;  162;  416;  616;  BK, 
8-11). 

215.  Late  in  his  twenty-second  year  we  find  Thutmose 
with  his  army  ready  to  take  the  field.  He  marched 
from  Tharu,  the  last  Egyptian  city  on  the  northeastern 
frontier,  about  the  19th  of  April,  1479  B.  c.  On  the  10th 
of  May  he  camped  on  the  southern  slopes  of  the  Carmel 
range.  Meantime  the  army  of  the  Asiatic  allies,  under 
the  command  of  the  king  of  Kadesh,  had  pushed  south- 
ward and  had  occupied  the  strong  fortress  of  Megiddo, 
in  the  plain  of  Esdraelon,  on  the  north  slope  of  the 
Carmel  ridge.  This  place,  which  here  appears  in  history 
for  the  first  time,  was  not  only  a  powerful  stronghold, 
but  occupied  an  important  strategic  position,  command- 
ing the  road  from  Egypt  between  the  two  Lebanonsto  the 
Euphrates,  hence  its  prominent  role  in  Oriental  history 
from  this  time  on  (BAR,  II,  409;  415;  417-419;  439). 

216.  Learning  now  of  the  enemy's  occupation  of 
Megiddo,  Thutmose  called  a  council  of  his  oflScers  to 
ascertain  the  most  favourable  route  for  crossing  the 
ridge  and  reaching  the  plain  of  Esdraelon.  Thutmose 
characteristically  favoured  the  direct  route,  but  his 
oflftcers  urged  that  two  other  roads,  involving  long  de- 
tours to  north  or  south,  were  more  open,  while  the 


THE  WARS  OF  THUTMOSE  III  225 


middle  one  was  a  narrow  pass.  Their  objections 
showed  a  good  mihtary  understanding  of  the  dangers 
of  the  pass;  but  Thutmose  swore  a  round  oath  that  he 
would  move  against  his  enemies  by  the  most  direct 
route,  and  they  might  follow  or  not  as  they  pleased. 
Accordingly,  making  his  preparations  very  deliberately, 
he  moved  into  the  pass  on  the  thirteenth  of  May.  To 
prevent  surprise  and  also  to  work  upon  the  courage  of 
his  army,  he  personally  took  the  head  of  the  column, 
vowing  that  none  should  precede  him,  but  that  he  would 
go  ''forth  at  the  head  of  his  army  himself,  showing  the 
way  by  his  own  footsteps."  Having  met  only  a  forepost 
of  the  enemy  on  the  heights,  he  disengaged  his  army  in 
safety  from  the  pass,  and  emerged  upon  the  plain  of 
Esdraelon  without  opposition  on  the  south  of  Megiddo. 
The  Asiatics  had  thus  lost  an  inestimable  opportunity  to 
destroy  him  in  detail.  Late  in  the  afternoon  of  the 
same  day  (the  fourteenth),  or  during  the  ensuing  night, 
Thutmose  drew  his  line  around  the  west  side  of  Megiddo 
and  boldly  threw  out  his  left  wing  on  the  northwest  of 
the  city.  He  thus  secured,  in  case  of  necessity,  a  safe 
and  easy  line  of  retreat  westward  along  the  northern- 
most of  the  three  roads  crossing  Carmel,  while  at  the 
same  time  his  extreme  left  might  cut  off  the  enemy  from 
flight  northward  (BAR,  II,  420-428). 

217.  Early  the  next  morning,  the  fifteenth  of  May, 
Thutmose  gave  orders  to  form  and  move  out  in  order 
of  battle.  In  a  glittering  chariot  of  electrum  he  took 
up  his  position  with  the  centre;  his  right  or  southern 
wing  rested  on  a  hill  southwest  of  Megiddo;  while,  as 
we  have  seen,  his  left  was  northwest  of  the  city.  The 
Asiatics  in  a  north  and  south  line  barred  his  way  to  the 
city.  He  immediately  attacked  them,  leading  the  onset 
himself  "at  the  head  of  his  army."    The  enemy  gave 


226 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


way  at  the  first  charge,  "  they  fled  headlong  to  Megiddo 
in  fear,  and  many,  finding  the  gates  closed  against  them, 
were  drawn  up  the  wall  by  their  friends  within.  The 
discipline  of  an  Oriental  army  cannot  to  this  day  with- 
stand a  rich  display  of  plunder;  much  less  could  the  host 
of  Egypt  in  the  fifteenth  century  b.  c.  resist  the  spoil  of 
the  combined  armies  of  Syria,  although  by  pushing 
quickly  forward  they  might  have  captured  Megiddo  at 
once.  It  is  evident  that  in  the  disorganized  rout  the 
camp  of  the  king  of  Kadesh  fell  into  the  hands  of  the 
Egyptians,  and  they  brought  its  rich  and  luxurious 
furniture  to  the  Pharaoh  (BAR,  II,  429-433 ;  413;  616; 
414). 

218.  But  the  stem  Thutmose  was  not  to  be  placated 
by  these  tokens  of  victory;  he  saw  only  what  had  been 
lost,  and  gave  orders  for  the  instant  investment  of  the 
city.  The  season  was  far  enough  advanced  so  that  the 
Egyptians  foraged  on  the  grain-fields  of  the  plain  of 
Esdraelon,  while  its  herds  furnished  them  the  fat  of  the 
land.  They  were  the  first  host,  of  whom  we  have 
knowledge,  to  ravage  this  fair  plain,  destined  to  be  the 
battle-ground  of  the  east  and  west  from  Thutmose  III 
to  Napoleon.  But  within  the  walls  all  was  different; 
proper  provision  for  a  siege  had  not  been  made,  and 
famine  finally  wrought  its  customary  havoc  in  the 
beleaguered  town,  which,  after  sustaining  the  siege  for 
some  weeks,  at  length  surrendered.  But  the  king  of 
Kadesh  was  not  among  the  prisoners.  To  compensate 
for  the  failure  to  capture  the  dangerous  king  of  Kadesh 
himself  they  secured  his  family  as  hostages;  for  Thut- 
mose says,  **Lo,  my  majesty  carried  off  the  wives  of 
that  vanquished  one,  together  with  his  children,  and 
the  wives  of  the  chiefs  who  were  there,  together  with 
their  children."    Rich  as  had  been  the  spoil  on  the 


THE  WARS  OF  THFIMOSE  III 


227 


battle-field,  it  was  not  to  be  compared  with  the  wealth 
of  the  allied  kings  which  awaited  the  Pharaoh  in  the 
captured  city:  nine  hundred  and  twenty-four  chariots, 
including  those  of  the  kings  of  Kadesh  and  INIegiddo, 
two  thousand  two  hundred  and  thirty-eight  horses,  two 
hundred  suits  of  armour,  again  including  those  of  the 
same  two  kings,  the  gorgeous  tent  of  the  king  of  Kadesh, 
his  magnificent  household  furniture,  and  among  it  his 
royal  sceptre,  a  silver  statue,  perhaps  of  his  god,  and  an 
ebony  statue  of  himself,  wrought  with  gold  and  lapis- 
lazuli,  besides  prodigious  quantities  of  gold  and  silver 
(BAR,  II,  433-437;  441  /.;  506;  I  Kings,  xw,  23). 

219.  Thutmose  lost  no  time  in  marching  as  far  north- 
ward as  the  hostile  strongholds  and  the  lateness  of  the 
season  would  permit.  He  captured  three  cities  on  the 
southern  slopes  of  Lebanon.  They  quickly  succumbed. 
Here,  in  order  to  prevent  another  southward  advance 
of  the  still  unsubmissive  king  of  Kadesh  and  to  hold 
command  of  the  important  road  northward  between  the 
Lebanons,  he  now  built  a  fortress.  He  then  began  the 
reorganization  of  the  conquered  territory,  supplanting 
the  old  revolting  dynasts,  of  course,  with  others  who 
might  be  expected  to  show  loyalty  to  Egypt.  These 
new  rulers  were  allowed  to  govern  much  as  they  pleased, 
if  only  they  regularly  and  promptly  sent  in  the  yearly 
tribute  to  Egypt.  In  order  to  hold  them  to  their 
obligations  Thutmose  carried  off  their  eldest  sons  with 
him  to  Egypt,  where  they  were  educated  and  so  treated 
as  to  engender  feelings  of  friendliness  toward  Egypt; 
and  whenever  a  king  of  one  of  the  Syrian  cities  died 
''his  majesty  would  cause  his  son  to  stand  in  his  place." 
The  Pharaoh  now  controlled  all  Palestine  as  far  north 
as  the  southern  end  of  Lebanon,  and,  further  inland, 
also  Damascus  (BAR,  II,  548;  434;  402;  467;  436). 


228 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


Early  in  October  Thutmose  had  reached  Thebes. 
It  was  less  than  six  months  since  he  had  left  Egypt,  and 
he  had  done  all  within  the  limits  of  the  dry  season  in 
Palestine.  With  what  difficulties  such  an  achievement 
was  beset  we  may  learn  by  a  perusal  of  Napoleon *s 
campaign  from  Egypt  through  the  same  country  against 
Akko,  which  is  almost  exactly  as  far  from  Egypt  as 
Megiddo.  We  may  then  understand  why  it  was  that 
Thutmose  immediately  celebrated  three  "Feasts  of 
Victory"  in  his  capital,  each  five  days  long.  These 
feasts  were  made  permanent,  endowed  with  an  annual 
income  of  plentiful  offerings.  At  the  feast  of  Opet, 
Amon's  greatest  annual  feast,  lasting  eleven  days,  he 
presented  to  the  god  the  three  towns  captured  in 
southern  Lebanon,  besides  a  rich  array  of  magnificent 
vessels  of  gold,  silver  and  costly  stones  from  the  Asiatic 
spoil,  and  also  extensive  lands  in  Upper  and  Lower 
Egypt,  equipped  with  plentiful  herds  and  with  hosts  of 
peasant  serfs  taken  from  among  his  Asiatic  prisoners. 
Thus  was  established  the  foundation  of  that  vast  fortune 
of  Amon,  which  now  began  to  grow  out  of  all  proportion 
to  the  increased  wealth  of  other  temples  (BAR,  II,  409 ; 
549;  550-553;  557  /.;  543-547;  555;  596). 

220.  The  great  task  of  properly  consolidating  the 
empire  was  now  fairly  begun;  but  Egyptian  power  in 
Asia  during  the  long  military  inactivity  of  Hatshepsut's 
reign  had  been  so  thoroughly  shaken  that  Thutmose  III 
was  far  from  ready,  as  a  result  of  the  first  campaign,  to 
march  immediately  upon  Kadesh,  his  most  dangerous 
enemy.  Moreover,  he  desired  properly  to  organize 
and  render  perfectly  secure  the  states  already  under  the 
power  of  Egypt.  In  the  year  twenty -four  therefore  he 
marched  in  a  wide  curve  through  the  conquered 
territory  of  northern  Palestine  and  southern  Syria,  while 


THE  WARS  OF  THUTMOSE  III 


229 


the  dynasts  came  to  pay  their  tribute  and  do  him  homage 
in  "every  place  of  his  majesty's  circuit  where  the  tent 
was  pitched."  The  news  of  his  great  victory  of  the 
year  before  had  by  this  time  reached  Assyria,  now  just 
rising  on  the  eastern  horizon,  with  her  career  as  yet  all 
before  her.  Her  king  naturally  desired  to  be  on  good 
terms  with  the  great  empire  of  the  west,  and  the  gifts  of 
costly  stone,  chiefly  lapis-lazuli  from  Babylon,  and  the 
horses  which  he  sent  to  Thutmose,  so  that  they  reached 
him  while  on  this  campaign,  were,  of  course,  interpreted 
by  the  Egyptians  as  tribute.  In  all  probability  no  battles 
were  fought  on  this  expedition. 

221.  Returning  to  Thebes  as  before,  in  October,  the 
king  immediately  planned  for  the  enlargement  of  the 
Karnak  temple,  to  suit  the  needs  of  the  empire  of  which 
he  dreamed.  As  the  west  end,  the  real  front  of  the 
temple,  was  marred  by  Hatshepsut's  obelisks,  rising 
from  his  father's  dismantled  hall,  Thutmose  III  laid  out 
his  imposing  colonnaded  halls  at  the  other,  or  east  end, 
of  the  temple,  where  they  to-day  form  one  of  the  great 
architectural  beauties  of  Thebes  "^(Map  IV;  BAR,  II,  100; 
306;  772;  600;  602;  608  JJ.;  447,1.25;  446;  599  ;^.; 
604/.). 

222.  The  third  campaign,  of  the  next  year  (twenty- 
five)  was  evidently  spent  like  the  first,  in  organizing  the 
southern  half  of  the  future  x\siatic  empire,  the  northern 
half  being  still  unsubdued  (BAR,  II,  450-452).  No 
records  of  the  fourth  campaign  have  survived,  but 
the  course  of  his  subsequent  operations  was  such 
that  it  must  have  been  confined  like  the  others  to  the 
territory  already  regained.  It  had  now  become 
evident  to  Thutmose  that  he  could  not  march 
northward  between  the  Lebanons  and  operate 
against  Kadesh,  while  leaving  his  flank  exposed  to  the 


230 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


unsubdued  Phoenician  cities  of  the  coast.  It  was  like- 
wise impossible  to  strike  Naharin  and  Mitanni  without 
first  destroying  Kadesh,  which  dominated  the  Orontes 
valley.  He  therefore  planned  a  series  of  campaigns, 
directed  first  against  the  northern  coast,  which  he  might 
then  use  as  a  base  of  operations  against  Kadesh;  and 
this  being  once  disposed  of,  he  could  again  push  in 
from  the  coast  against  Mitanni  and  the  whole  Naharin 
region.  He  therefore  organized  a  fleet  and  placed  in 
command  of  it  a  trusty  officer  named  Nibamon,  who 
had  served  with  his  father.  Employing  the  new  fleet, 
he  transported  his  army  by  sea,  and  in  the  year  twenty- 
nine,  on  his  fifth  campaign,  he  moved  for  the  first  time 
against  the  northern  coast  cities,  the  wealthy  commercial 
kingdoms  of  Phoenicia.  The  name  of  the  wealthy  city 
which  Thutmose  first  took  is  unfortunately  lost,  but  it 
was  on  the  coast  opposite  Tunip,  which  sent  it  reinforce- 
ments. It  must  have  been  a  place  of  considerable  im- 
portance, for  it  brought  him  rich  spoils;  and  there  was 
in  the  town  a  temple  of  Amon,  erected  by  one  of  Thut- 
mose IH's  predecessors.  Thence  the  Pharaoh  moved 
his  army  southward  against  the  powerful  city  of  Arvad. 
A  short  siege  sufficed  to  bring  the  place  to  terms,  and 
with  its  surrender  a  vast  quantity  of  the  wealth  of 
Phoenicia  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Egyptians,  who 
spent  days  of  feasting  and  drunkenness  in  the  rich 
Phoenician  vineyards  and  gardens.  The  dynasts  along 
the  coast  now  came  in  with  their  tribute  and  offered  sub- 
missions. Thutmose  had  thus  gained  a  secure  footing 
on  the  northern  coast,  easily  accessible  by  water  from 
Egypt,  and  forming  an  admirable  base  for  operations 
inland,  as  he  had  foreseen.  He  then  returned  to  Egypt, 
possibly  not  for  the  first  time,  by  water  (BAR,  II,  779; 
457-459;  460-464). 


THE  WARS  OF  THUTMOSE  III 


231 


223.  All  was  now  in  readiness  for  the  long  planned 
advance  upon  Kadesh.  It  had  taken  five  campaigns 
to  gain  the  south  and  the  coast;  the  sixth  was  at  last 
directed  against  his  long  invulnerable  enemy.  In  the 
year  thirty  the  close  of  the  spring  rains  found  Thutmose 
disembarking  his  army  from  the  fleet  at  Simyra,  by  the 
mouth  of  the  Eleutheros,  up  the  valley  of  which  he  im- 
mediately marched  upon  Kadesh.  The  city  lay  on  the 
west  side  of  the  Orontes  river,  surrounded  by  its  waters 
and  those  of  a  tributary  at  this  point,  at  the  north  end  of 
the  high  valley  between  the  two  Lebanons  (Map  II). 
An  inner  moat  encircling  the  high  curtain-walls  within 
the  banks  of  the  rivers  reinforced  the  natural  water- 
defences,  so  that,  in  spite  of  its  location  in  a  perfectly 
level  plain,  it  was  probably  the  most  formidable  fortress 
in  Syria  and  commanded  the  Orontes  valley,  the  only 
route  northward  in  inner  Syria.  It  will  be  remembered, 
furthermore,  that  it  also  dominated  the  Eleutheros 
valley,  the  only  road  inland  from  the  coast  for  a  long 
distance  both  north  and  south  (BK,  13-21;  49).  The 
capture  of  such  a  place  by  siege  was  an  achievement  of 
no  slight  difficulty,  but  the  scanty  sources  permit  us  to 
discern  only  that  it  was  taken  after  a  difficult  siege,  last- 
ing from  early  spring  to  harvest  time,  during  which  at 
least  one  assault  was  made.  The  siege  continued  long 
enough  to  encourage  the  coast  cities  in  the  hope  that 
Thutmose  had  suffered  a  reverse.  Before  the  long 
planned  advance  into  Naharin  could  be  undertaken 
the  revolting  cities  of  the  coast  had  therefore  again  to  be 
chastised.  The  rest  of  this  season  and  all  the  next,  the 
seventh  campaign  (year  31),  were  spent  in  punishing 
the  obstinate  Arvad,  and  its  neighbour  Simyra.  Thut- 
mose then  sailed  from  harbour  to  harbour  along  the 
coast,  displaying  his  force  and  thoroughly  organizing 


232  THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


the  administration  of  the  cities.  In  particular  he  saw 
to  it  that  every  harbour-town  should  be  liberally  supplied 
with  provisions  for  his  coming  campaign  in  Naharin. 
On  his  return  to  Egypt  he  found  envoys  from  the  ex- 
treme south,  probably  eastern  Nubia,  bringing  to  the 
Pharaoh  their  tribute,  showing  that  he  was  maintaining 
an  aggressive  policy  in  the  far  south  while  at  the  same 
time  so  active  in  the  north  (BAR,  II,  465;  585;  467; 
470-475). 

224.  Preparations  for  the  great  campaign  delayed 
Thutmose  until  the  spring  of  the  year  thirty-three, 
when  we  find  him  on  the  march  down  the  Orontes  on 
his  eighth  campaign.  Having  captured  Ketne,  he 
fought  a  battle  at  the  city  of  Senzar,  which  he  also  took. 
Entering  Naharin  no  serious  force  confronted  him 
until  he  had  arrived  at  "The  Height  of  Wan,  on  the 
west  of  Aleppo,"  where  a  considerable  battle  was 
fought.  Aleppo  itself  must  have  fallen,  for  the  Pharaoh 
could  otherwise  hardly  have  pushed  on  without  delay, 
as  he  evidently  did.  "Behold  his  majesty  went  north, 
capturing  the  towns  and  laying  waste  the  settlements  of 
that  foe  of  wretched  Naharin, who  was,  of  course,  the 
king  of  Mitanni.  Egyptian  troops  were  again  plunder- 
ing the  Euphrates  valley,  a  license  which  they  had  not 
enjoyed  since  the  days  of  their  fathers  under  Thutmose 
I,  some  fifty  years  before  (BAR,  II,  476;  598;  584; 
581  /.;  479). 

225.  As  he  advanced  northward  Thutmose  now 
turned  slightly  toward  the  Euphrates,  in  order  to  reach 
Carchemish.  In  the  battle  fought  at  that  city  it  must 
have  been  his  long  unscathed  foe,  the  king  of  Mitanni, 
whose  army  Thutmose  scattered  far  and  wide,  "  not  one 
looked  behind  him,  but  they  fled  forsooth  like  a  herd  of 
mountain  goats."  This  battle  at  last  enabled  Thutmose 


THE  WARS  OF  THUTMOSE  III 


233 


to  do  what  he  had  been  fighting  ten  years  to  attain,  for 
he  now  crossed  the  Euphrates  into  Mitanni  and  set  up 
his  boundary  tablet  on  the  east  side,  an  achievement  of 
which  none  of  his  fathers  could  boast.  But  the  season 
was  now  far  advanced;  a  winter  in  Naharin  was  im- 
possible. He  therefore  returned  unmolested  to  the 
west  shore,  where  he  found  the  boundary  tablet  of  his 
father,  Thutmose  I,  and  with  the  greatest  satisfaction 
he  set  up  another  of  his  own  alongside  it.  But  one 
serious  enterprise  still  awaited  him  before  he  could 
return  to  the  coast.  After  the  capture  of  the  city  of 
Niy,  a  little  further  down  the  Euphrates,  the  object  of 
the  campaign  had  been  accomplished  and  its  arduous 
duties  were  past.  It  is  now  that  we  behold  the  great 
king  diverting  himself  in  an  elephant  hunt,  in  which,  but 
for  the  bravery  and  adroitness  of  Amenemhab,  a  favour- 
ite general,  he  would  probably  have  lost  his  life  (BAR, 
11,479;  583;  478;  481;  656,11,7  /.;  480  /.;  588). 

226.  Meantime  all  the  local  princes  and  dynasts  of 
Naharin  appeared  at  his  camp  and  brought  in  their 
tribute  as  a  token  of  their  submission.  Even  far  off 
Babylon  was  now  anxious  to  secure  the  good-will  of  the 
Pharaoh,  and  its  king  sent  him  gifts  wrought  of  lapis- 
lazuli.  But  what  was  still  more  important,  the  mighty 
people  of  the  Kheta,  whose  domain  stretched  far  away 
into  the  unknown  regions  of  Asia  INIinor,  sent  him  a 
rich  gift.  Thus  the  Kheta,  probably  the  Biblical 
Hittites,  emerge  for  the  first  time,  as  far  as  we  know, 
upon  the  stage  of  Oriental  history  (Note  V).  On 
Thutmose's  arrival  at  the  coast  he  laid  upon  the  chiefs 
of  the  Lebanon  the  yearly  obligation  to  keep  the  Phoe- 
nician harbours  supplied  with  the  necessary  provision 
for  his  campaigns.  From  any  point  in  this  line  of 
harbours,  which  he  could  reach  from  Egypt  by  ship  in  a 


234 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


few  days,  he  was  then  able  to  strike  inland  without  delay 
and  bring  delinquents  to  an  immediate  accounting. 
His  sea  power  was  such  that  the  king  of  Cyprus  became 
practically  a  vassal  of  Egypt,  as  later  in  Saitic  times. 
Moreover,  his  fleet  made  him  so  feared  in  the  islands  of 
the  north  that  he  was  able  to  exert  a  loose  control  over 
the  eastern  Mediterranean,  westward  an  indefinite 
distance  toward  the  ^Egean.  Likewise  the  Pharaoh's 
treasury  was  now  receiving  the  richest  contributions 
from  his  trade  with  Punt;  and  it  is  at  some  time  dur- 
ing these  wars  that  Thutmose  is  also  found  in  posses- 
sion of  the  entire  oasis  region  on  the  west  of  Egypt 
(BAR,  II,  482-486;  763). 

227.  The  great  object  for  which  Thutmose  had  so 
long  striven  was  now  achieved;  he  had  followed  his 
fathers  to  the  Euphrates.  The  kings  whom  they  had 
been  able  to  defeat  singly  and  in  succession,  he  had  been 
obliged  to  meet  united,  and  against  the  combined 
military  resources  of  Syria  and  northern  Palestine  he 
had,  in  ten  years'  warfare,  forced  his  way  through  to  the 
north.  He  might  pardonably  permit  himself  some 
satisfaction  in  the  contemplation  of  what  he  had  accom- 
plished. A  pair  of  enormous  obelisks,  which  had  been  in 
preparation  for  his  second  jubilee,  were  now  erected  at 
the  Karnak  temple  and  one  of  them  bore  the  proud 
words  ''Thutmose,  w^ho  crossed  the  great  'Bend  of 
Naharin'  [the  Euphrates]  with  might  and  with  victory 
at  the  head  of  his  army."  The  other  obelisk  of  this 
pair  has  perished,  but  this  one  now  stands  in  Constanti- 
nople. Indeed,  all  of  the  great  king's  obelisks  in  Egypt 
have  either  perished  or  been  removed,  while  the  modern- 
world  possesses  a  line  of  them  reaching  from  Constanti- 
nople, through  Rome  and  London  to  New  York  (BAR 
II,  382-384;  629-636). 


THE  WARS  OF  THUTMOSE  III  235 


228.  With  such  monuments  as  these  before  them  the 
people  of  Thebes  soon  forgot  that  he  who  erected  them 
was  once  a  humble  priest  in  the  very  temple  where  his 
giant  obelisks  now  rose.  On  its  walls,  moreover,  they 
saw  long  annals  of  his  victories  in  Asia,  endless  records 
of  the  plunder  he  had  taken,  with  splendid  reliefs 
picturing  the  rich  portion  which  fell  to  Amon.  In  the 
garden  of  Amon's  temple  grew  the  strange  plants  of 
Syria-Palestine,  while  animals  unknown  to  the  hunter 
of  the  Nile  valley  wandered  among  trees  equally  un- 
familiar. Envoys  from  the  north  and  south  were  con- 
stantly appearing  at  the  court.  Phoenician  galleys,  such 
as  the  upper  Nile  had  never  seen  before,  delighted  the 
eyes  of  the  curious  crowd  at  the  docks  of  Thebes;  and 
from  these  landed  whole  cargoes  of  the  finest  stuffs  of 
Phoenicia,  gold  and  silver  vessels  of  magnificent  work- 
manship, from  the  cunning  hand  of  the  Tyrian  artificer 
or  the  workshops  of  distant  Asia  Minor,  Cyprus,  Crete 
and  the  ^'Egean  islands;  exquisite  furniture  of  carved 
ivory,  delicately  wrought  ebony,  chariots  mounted  with 
gold  and  electrum,  and  bronze  implements  of  war; 
besides  these,  fine  horses  for  the  Pharaoh's  stables  and 
untold  quantities  of  the  best  that  the  fields,  gardens, 
vineyards,  orchards  and  pastures  of  Asia  produced. 
Under  heavy  guard  emerged  from  these  ships,  too,  the 
annual  tribute  of  gold  and  silver  in  large  commercial 
rings,  some  of  which  weighed  as  much  as  twelve  pounds 
each,  while  others  for  purposes  of  daily  trade  were  of 
but  a  few  grains  weight.  The  amount  of  wealth  which 
thus  came  into  Egypt  must  have  been  enormous  for  those 
times,  and  on  one  occasion  the  treasury  was  able  to 
weigh  out  some  eight  thousand  nine  hundred  and  forty- 
three  pounds  of  gold-silver  alloy.  Nubia  also,  under 
the  Egyptian  viceroy,  was  rendering  with  great  regu- 


236 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


larity  her  annual  impost  of  gold,  negro  slaves,  cattle, 
ebony,  ivory  and  grain;  much  of  the  gold  in  the  above 
hoard  must  have  come  from  the  Nubian  mines.  Similar 
sights  diverted  the  multitudes  of  the  once  provincial 
Thebes,  when  every  autumn  Thutmose's  war-galleys 
moored  in  the  harbour  of  the  town;  and  the  unhappy 
Asiatic  captives,  bound  one  to  another  in  long  lines, 
were  led  down  the  gang  planks  to  begin  a  life  of  slave - 
labour  for  the  Pharaoh.  With  their  strange  speech  and 
uncouth  postures  the  poor  wretches  were  the  subject  of 
jibe  and  merriment  on  the  part  of  the  multitude;  while 
the  artists  of  the  time  could  never  forbear  caricaturing 
them,  in  the  gorgeous  paintings  in  which  the  vizier  and 
treasury  officials  loved  to  perpetuate  such  scenes  on  the 
inner  walls  of  their  tomb  chapels.  Many  of  them 
found  their  way  into  the  houses  of  the  Pharaoh's 
favourites  and  generals;  but  the  larger  number  were 
immediately  employed  on  the  temple  estates,  the 
Pharaoh's  domains,  or  in  the  construction  of  his  great 
monuments  and  buildings.  We  shall  later  see  how  this 
captive  labour  transformed  Thebes  (BAR,  II,  402  /.; 
760  /.;  773;  756-759). 

229.  The  return  of  the  king  every  autumn  began  for 
him  a  winter,  if  not  so  arduous,  at  least  as  busily  occu- 
pied as  the  campaigning  season  in  Asia.  Immediately 
after  his  return  Thutmose  made  a  tour  of  inspection 
throughout  Egypt  for  the  purpose  of  suppressing  corrup- 
tion and  oppression  in  the  local  administration.  On 
these  journeys,  too,  he  had  opportunity  of  observing  the 
progress  on  the  noble  temples  which  he  was  either  erect- 
ing, restoring  or  adorning  at  over  thirty  different  places 
of  which  we  know,  and  many  more  which  have  perished. 
He  revived  the  long  neglected  Delta,  and  from  there  to 
the  third  cataract  his  buildings  were  rising,  strung  like 


THE  WARS  OF  THUTMOSE  III 


237 


gems,  along  the  river.  Besides  the  Nubian  sources  of 
gold,  he  organized  the  other  gold  country,  that  on  the 
Coptos  road,  placing  it  under  a  ''governor  of  the  gold 
country  of  Coptos."  It  is  evident  that  every  resource 
of  his  empire  was  being  thus  exploited.  The  increasing 
wealth  of  the  Amon  temple  demanded  reorganization  of 
its  management,  which  the  king  personally  accomplished. 
As  the  fruit  of  a  moment's  respite  from  the  cares  of 
state,  he  even  handed  to  his  chief  of  artificers  designs 
sketched  by  his  own  royal  hand  for  vessels  which  he 
desired  for  the  temple  service  (BAR,  III,  58;  II,  774  /. 
571;  545). 

230.  His  campaigning  w^as  now  as  thoroughly  or- 
ganized as  the  administration  at  Thebes.  As  soon  as 
the  spring  rains  in  Syria  and  Palestine  had  ceased,  he 
regularly  disembarked  his  troops  in  some  Phoenician  or 
north  Syrian  harbour.  Here  his  permanent  officials  had 
effected  the  collection  of  the  necessary  stores  from  the 
neighbouring  dynasts,  who  were  obligated  to  furnish 
them.  His  herald  or  marshal,  Intef,  accompanied  him 
on  all  his  marches,  and  as  Thutmose  advanced  inland 
Intef  preceded  him,  sought  out  the  palace  of  the  local 
dynast  in  each  town,  and  prepared  it  for  Thutmose's 
reception.  Had  it  been  preserved,  the  life  of  these  war- 
riors of  Thutmose  would  form  a  stirring  chapter  in  the 
history  of  the  early  East.  The  career  of  his  general, 
Amenemhab,  who  rescued  the  king  in  the  elephant 
hunt,  is  but  a  hint  of  the  life  of  the  Pharaoh's  follow- 
ers in  bivouac  and  on  battlefield,  a  life  crowded  to  the 
full  with  perilous  adventure  and  hard-won  distinction. 
Such  incidents,  of  course,  found  their  way  among  the 
common  people,  and  many  a  stirring  adventure  from 
the  Syrian  campaigns  took  form  in  folk-tales,  told 
with  eager  interest  in  the  market-places  and  the  streets 


238 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


of  Thebes.  A  lucky  chance  has  rescued  one  of  these 
tales  written  by  some  scribe  on  a  page  or  two  of 
papyrus.  It  concerns  one  Thutiy,  a  great  general  of 
Thutmose,  and  his  clever  capture  of  the  city  of  Joppa 
by  introducing  his  picked  soldiers  into  the  town,  con- 
cealed in  panniers,  borne  by  a  train  of  donkeys.  But 
Thutiy  was  not  a  creation  of  fancy,  and  some  of  his 
splendid  tomb  equipment,  especially  a  golden  dish 
giyen  him  by  his  king,  still  surviyes.  But  the  daily 
records  of  Thutmose's  scribal  annalist  which  might 
have  enabled  us  to  follow  not  only  the  whole  romance 
of  Thutmose's  personal  adventures  on  the  field  and 
those  of  his  commanders,  but  also  the  entire  course 
of  his  campaigns,  have  all  perished.  From  these, 
we  have  upon  the  wall  at  Karnak  only  the  capricious 
extracts  of  a  temple  scribe,  more  anxious  to  set 
forth  the  spoil  and  Amon's  share  therein  than  to 
perpetuate  the  story  of  his  king's  great  deeds.  How 
much  he  has  passed  over,  the  biography  of  Amenemhab 
shows  only  too  well;  and  thus  all  that  we  have  of 
the  wars  of  Egypt's  greatest  commander  has  filtered 
through  the  shrivelled  soul  of  an  ancient  bureaucrat, 
who  little  dreamed  how  hungrily  future  ages  would 
ponder  his  meagre  excerpts  (BAR,  II,  763-771;  577; 
392). 

231.  The  conquest  in  Asia  was  not  yet  complete. 
The  spring  of  the  thirty-fourth  year  therefore  found 
Thutmose  again  in  Zahi  on  his  ninth  campaign,  punish- 
ing some  disaffection,  probably  in  the  Lebanon  region. 
This  year  evidently  saw  the  extension  of  his  power  in 
the  south  also;  for  he  secured  the  son  of  the  chief  of 
Irem,  the  neighbour  of  Punt,  as  a  hostage;  and  the 
combined  tribute  of  Nubia  amounted  to  over  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty-four  pounds  of  gold  alone,  besides  the 


THE  WARS  OF  THURMOSE  III 


239 


usual  ebony,  ivory,  grain,  cattle  and  slaves  (BAR,  II, 
489-495).  It  was  now  nearly  two  years  since  he  had  seen 
Naharin,  and  in  so  short  a  time  its  princes  had  ceased  to 
fear  his  power.  They  formed  a  coalition,  with  some 
prince  at  its  head,  possibly  the  king  of  Aleppo,  whom 
Thutmose's  Annals  call  ''that  wretched  foe  of  Naharin," 
and  together  revolted.  Thutmose's  continual  state  of 
preparation  enabled  him  to  appear  promptly  on  the 
plains  of  Naharin  in  the  spring  of  the  year  thirty-five. 
He  engaged  the  allies  in  battle  at  a  place  called  Araina, 
which  we  are  unable  to  locate  with  certainty,  but  it  was 
probably  somewhere  in  the  lower  Orontes  valley.  Here 
the  alliance  of  the  Naharin  dynasts  was  completely 
shattered,  and  its  resources  for  future  resistance  de- 
stroyed or  carried  off  by  the  victorious  Egyptians  (BAR, 
II,  587;  498-501). 

232.  Thutmose's  annals  for  the  next  two  years  are 
lost,  and  we  know  nothing  of  the  objective  of  his  eleventh 
and  twelfth  campaigns;  but  the  year  thirty-eight  found 
him  on  his  thirteenth  campaign,  chastising  southern 
Lebanon,  while  the  next  expedition  (fourteenth  cam- 
paign) carried  him  from  southern  Palestine  to  Syria, 
setting  his  house  in  order.  On  the  march  the  envoys 
of  Cyprus  and  Arrapaldiitis  met  him  with  gifts.  The 
tribute  seems  to  have  come  in  regularly  for  the  next  two 
years  (forty  and  forty-one),  and  again  the  king  of 
"  Kheta  the  Great "  sent  gifts,  which  Thutmose,  as  before, 
records  among  the  ''tribute"  (BAR,  II,  507;  511  /.; 
517;  580;  520-527). 

233.  The  princes  of  Syria,  sorely  chastised  as  they 
had  been,  were  nevertheless  unwilling  to  relinquish 
finally  their  independence.  Incited  by  Kadesh,  Thut- 
mose's inveterate  enemy,  they  again  rose  in  a  final  united 
effort  to  shake  off  the  Pharaoh's  strong  hand.  All 


240 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


Naharin,  especially  the  king  of  Tunip,  and  also  some 
of  the  northern  coast  cities,  had  been  induced  to  join 
the  alliance.  The  great  king  was  now  an  old  man, 
probably  over  seventy  years  of  age,  but  with  his  accus- 
tomed promptitude  he  appeared  with  his  fleet  off  the 
north  coast  of  Syria  in  the  spring  of  the  year  forty- two. 
It  was  his  seventeenth  and  last  campaign.  Like  his 
first,  it  was  directed  against  his  arch  enemy,  Kadesh, 
which  he  now  isolated  by  approaching  from  the  north 
and  capturing  Tunip  first.  He  then  accomplished  the 
march  up  the  Orontes  to  Kadesh  without  mishap 
and  wasted  the  to^vTis  of  the  region.  The  king  of 
Kadesh  knowing  that  his  all  was  lost  unless  he 
could  defeat  Thutmose's  army,  made  a  desperate  re- 
sistance, but  in  spite  of  stratagem,  lost  the  battle 
before  the  city.  Thutmose's  siege-lines  now  closed  in 
on  the  doomed  city,  the  wall  was  breached,  and  the 
strongest  fortress  of  Syria  was  again  at  the  Pharaoh's 
mercy. 

234.  Never  again  as  long  as  the  old  king  lived  did  the 
Asiatic  princes  make  any  attempt  to  shake  off  his  yoke. 
In  seventeen  campaigns,  during  a  period  of  nineteen 
years,  he  had  beaten  them  into  submission,  until  there 
was  no  spirit  for  resistance  left  among  them.  With  the 
fall  of  Kadesh  disappeared  the  last  vestige  of  that 
Hyksos  power  which  had  once  subdued  Egypt.  Thut- 
mose's name  became  a  proverb  in  their  midst,  and 
when,  four  generations  later,  his  successors  failed  to 
shield  their  faithful  vassals  in  Naharin  from  the  aggres- 
sion of  the  Kheta,  the  forsaken  unfortunates  remembered 
Thutmose's  great  name,  and  wrote  pathetically  to 
'Egypt:  ''Who  formerly  could  have  plundered  Tunip 
without  being  plundered  by  Manakhbiria  (Thutmose 
III)  ?"    But  even  now,  at  three  score  and  ten  or  more. 


THE  WARS  OF  THUTMOSE  III 


241 


the  indomitable  old  warrior  had  the  harbours  equipped 
with  the  necessary  supplies,  and  there  is  little  doubt  that 
if  it  had  been  necessarv^  he  would  have  led  his  army 
into  Syria  again.  For  the  last  time  in  Asia  he  received 
the  envoys  of  the  tribute-paying  princes  in  his  tent, 
and  then  returned  to  Eg}'pt.  There  the  Nubian  envoys 
brought  him  over  five  hundred  and  seventy-eight  pounds 
of  gold  from  Wawat  alone  (AL,  41,  6-8;  BAR,  II, 
531;  533-539;  590). 

235.  Twelve  years  more  were  vouchsafed  the  great 
king  after  he  had  returned  from  his  last  campaign  in 
Asia.  He  still  continued  his  attention  to  Nubia,  sending 
out  an  expedition  thither  in  the  fiftieth  year  of  his  reign. 
It  was  now  paying  him  six  to  eight  hundred  pounds  of 
gold  each  year,  and  his  great  viceroy,  Nehi,  was  carrying 
on  his  buildings  there  at  a  number  of  points.  A  list  of 
one  hundred  and  fifteen  places  which  he  conquered  in 
Nubia  is  twice  displayed  on  the  walls  of  Karnak  (BAR, 
11,  772  fj.;  526  /.;  649-652). 

As  Thutmose  felt  his  strength  failing  he  made  coregent 
his  son,  Amenhotep  II,  born  to  him  by  Hatshepsut- 
Meretre,  a  queen  of  whose  origin  we  know  nothing. 
About  a  year  later,  on  the  17th  of  March,  in  the  year 
1447  B.  c,  when  he  was  within  five  weeks  of  the  end  of 
his  fifty-fourth  year  upon  the  throne,  he  closed  his  eyes 
upon  the  scenes  among  which  he  had  played  so  great 
a  part  (BAR,  II,  184;  592).  He  was  buried  in  his  tomb 
in  the  Valley  of  the  Kings  by  his  son,  and  his  body  still 
survives. 

236.  The  character  of  Thutmose  III  stands  forth 
with  more  of  colour  and  individuality  than  that  of  any 
king  of  early  Egypt,  except  Ikhnaton.  We  see  the  man 
of  a  tireless  energy  unknown  in  any  Pharaoh  before  or 
since;  the  man  of  versatility  designing  exquisite  vases 


242 


THE  EMPIRE:   FIRST  PERIOD 


in  a  moment  of  leisure;  the  lynx-eyed  administrator, 
who  launched  his  armies  upon  Asia  with  one  hand  and 
with  the  other  crushed  the  extortionate  tax-gatherer; 
the  astute  politician  of  many  a  court  crisis,  and  the  first 
great  military  strategist  of  the  early  East  (BAR,  II, 
664;  570;  452).  His  reign  marks  an  epoch  not  only  in 
Egypt,  but  in  the  whole  East  as  we  know  it  in  his  age. 
Never  before  in  history  had  a  single  brain  wielded  the 
resources  of  so  great  a  nation  and  wrought  them  into 
such  centralized,  permanent  and  at  the  same  time  mobile 
efficiency,  that  for  years  they  could  be  brought  to  bear 
with  incessant  impact  upon  another  continent.  The 
genius  which  rose  from  an  obscure  priestly  office  to 
accomplish  this  for  the  first  time  in  history  reminds  us 
of  an  Alexander  or  a  Napoleon.  He  built  the  first  real 
empire,  and  is  thus  the  first  character  possessed  of  uni- 
versal aspects,  the  first  world-hero.  From  the  fastnesses 
of  Asia  Minor,  the  marshes  of  the  upper  Euphrates,  the 
islands  of  the  iEgean,  the  swamps  of  Babylonia,  the 
distant  shores  of  Libya,  the  oases  of  the  Sahara,  the 
terraces  of  the  Somali  coast  and  the  upper  cataracts  of 
the  Nile,  the  princes  of  his  time  rendered  their  tribute 
to  his  greatness.  He  thus  made  not  only  a  world  wide 
impression  upon  his  age,  but  an  impression  of  a  new 
order.  His  commanding  figure,  towering  like  an  em- 
bodiment of  righteous  penalty  among  the  trivial  plots 
and  treacherous  schemes  of  the  petty  Syrian  dynasts, 
must  have  clarified  the  atmosphere  of  Oriental  politics 
as  a  strong  wind  drives  away  miasmic  vapours.  The 
inevitable  chastisement  of  his  strong  arm  was  held  in 
awed  remembrance  by  the  men  of  Naharin  for  three 
generations.  His  name  was  one  to  conjure  with,  and 
centuries  after  his  empire  had  crumbled  to  pieces  it  was 
placed  on  amulets  as  a  word  of  power.    It  should  be  a 


THE  WARS  OF  THUTMOSE  III  243 

matter  of  gratification  to  us  of  the  western  world  that 
on  either  shore  of  the  western  ocean,  one  of  this  king's 
greatest  monuments  now  rises  as  a  memorial  of  the 
world's  first  empire-builder.* 

*  Of  his  two  Heliopolitan  obelisks,  one  is  on  the  Thames 
Embankment  in  London,  and  the  other  in  Central  Park,  New 
York  aty. 


XVll 


THE  EMPIRE  AT  ITS  HEIGHT 

5, '37.  The  imperial  age  was  now  at  its  full  noontide 
in  the  Nile  valley.  The  old  seclusiveness  had  totally 
disappeared,  the  wall  of  partition  between  Asia  and 
Africa,  already  shaken  by  the  Hyksos,  was  now  com- 
pletely broken  down  by  the  wars  of  Thutmose  III. 
Traditional  limits  disappeared,  the  currents  of  life 
eddied  no  longer  within  the  landmarks  of  tiny  kingdoms, 
but  pulsed  from  end  to  end  of  a  great  empire,  embracing 
many  kingdoms  and  tongues,  from  the  upper  Nile  to  the 
upper  Euphrates.  The  wealth  of  Asiatic  trade,  cir- 
culating through  the  eastern  end  of  the  Mediterranean, 
which  once  flowed  down  the  Euphrates  to  Babylon,  was 
thus  diverted  to  the  Nile  Delta,  now  united  by  canal 
with  the  Red  Sea.  All  the  world  traded  in  the  Delta 
markets.  Assyria  was  still  in  her  infancy  and  Baby- 
lonia no  longer  possessed  any  political  influence  in  the 
west.  The  Pharaoh  looked  forward  to  an  indefinite 
lease  of  power  throughout  the  vast  empire  which  he 
had  conquered. 

Of  his  administration  in  Asia  we  know  very  little. 
The  whole  region  was  under  the  general  control  of  a 
"governor  of  the  north  countries."  To  bridle  the 
turbulent  Asiatic  dynasts  it  was  necessary  permanently 
to  station  troops  throughout  Syria-Palestine  in  strong- 
holds named  after  the  Pharaoh,  under  deputies  with 

244 


THE  EMPIRE  AT  ITS  HEIGHT 


245 


power  to  act  as  the  Pharaoh^s  representatives.  Re- 
mains of  an  Egyptian  temple  found  by  Renan  at 
Byblos  doubtless  belong  to  this  period.  As  we  have 
seen,  the  city-kings  were  allowed  to  rule  their  little 
states  with  great  freedom  as  long  as  they  paid  the 
annual  tribute  with  promptness  and  regularity.  AMien 
such  a  ruler  died,  his  son,  who  had  been  educated  at 
Thebes,  was  installed  in  the  father's  place.  The 
Asiatic  conquests  were  therefore  rather  a  series  of 
tributary  kingdoms  than  provinces,  which  indeed  repre- 
sent a  system  of  foreign  government  only  roughly  fore- 
shadovred  in  the  rule  of  the  viceroy  of  Kush  (AL;  BiVR, 
II,  457^58;  548;  787;  Rouge,  Revue  Arch,  n.  s.  vii, 
1863,  pp.  194  ff.). 

238.  As  so  often  in  similar  empires  of  later  age,  when 
the  great  king  died,  the  tributary  princes  revolted.  Thus 
Amenhotep  II  had  reigned  as  coregent  but  a  year  when 
his  father  died,  and  the  storm  broke.  All  Naharin,  in- 
cluding the  ]\Iitanni  princes,  and  probably  also  the 
northern  coast  cities,  were  combined,  or  at  least  simul- 
taneous, in  the  uprising.  With  all  his  father's  energy 
the  young  king  prepared  for  the  crisis  and  marched  into 
Asia  against  the  allies,  who  had  collected  a  large  army. 
The  south  had  evidently  not  ventured  to  rebel,  but  from 
northern  Palestine  on  the  revolt  was  general.  Leav- 
ing Eg}'pt  with  his  forces  in  April  of  his  second  year 
(1447  B.C.),  Amenhotep  was  in  touch  with  the  enemy  in 
northern  Palestine  early  in  ^Nlay,  and  immediately  fought 
an  action  at  Shemesh-Edom  against  the  princes  of 
Lebanon.  In  this  encounter  he  led  his  forces  in  person, 
as  his  father  before  him  had  so  often  done,  and  mingled 
freely  in  the  hand-to-hand  fray.  With  his  own  hand  he 
took  eighteen  prisoners  and  sixteen  horses.  The  enemy 
was  routed.    By  early  June  he  had  dispersed  the  allies 


246 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


of  Naharin,  captured  seven  of  their  dynasts  in  Tikhsi, 
retaken  Niy,  and  rescued  his  beleaguered  garrison  in 
Ikathi.  As  he  reached  his  extreme  advance,  which 
probably  surpassed  his  father's,  he  set  up  a  boundary 
tablet,  as  his  father  and  grandfather  had  done.  His 
return  was  a  triumphal  procession  as  he  approached 
Memphis,  driving  before  him  over  five  hundred  and 
fifty  of  the  north  Syrian  lords,  with  their  women,  horses 
and  chariots,  and  a  treasure  of  nearly  sixteen  hundred 
and  sixty  pounds  of  gold  in  the  form  of  vases  and  vessels, 
besides  nearly  one  hundred  thousand  pounds  of  copper. 
Proceeding  to  Thebes  the  seven  kings  of  Tikhsi  were 
hung  head  downward  on  the  prow  of  his  royal  barge  as 
he  approached  the  city.  He  personally  sacrificed  them 
in  the  presence  of  Amon  and  hanged  their  bodies  on  the 
walls  of  Thebes,  reserving  one  for  a  lesson  to  the  Nubians, 
as  we  shall  see  (BAR,  II,  184;  780-790;  792, 1.  4;  796  /. ; 
800, 11.  4-5;  804, 11.  2-3). 

239.  The  joung  Pharaoh  now  directed  his  attention 
to  the  other  extremity  of  his  empire.  He  dispatched  an 
expedition  into  Nubia,  bearing  the  body  of  the  seventh 
king  of  Tikhsi,  which  was  hung  up  on  the  wall  of  Napa- 
ta,  just  below  the  fourth  cataract,  in  the  region  of  Karoy, 
the  southern  limit  of  Egyptian  administration.  Here 
Amenhotep  set  up  tablets  marking  his  southern  frontier, 
and  beyond  these  there  was  no  more  control  of  the  rude 
Nubian  tribes  than  was  necessary  to  keep  open  the 
trade-routes  from  the  south  and  prevent  the  barbarians 
from  becoming  so  bold  as  to  invade  the  province  in 
plundering  expeditions.  Thenceforth,  as  far  as  we 
know,  he  was  not  obliged  to  invade  either  Asia  or  Nubia 
again  (BAR,  II,  1025;  800;  791-798). 

240.  Personally,  we  are  able  to  discern  little  of 
Amenhotep  11^  but  he  seems  to  have  been  a  worthy  son 


THE  EMPIRE  AT  ITS  HEIGHT 


247 


of  the  great  king.  Physically  he  was  a  very  powerful 
man,  and  claims  in  his  inscriptions  that  no  man  could 
draw  his  bow,  which  curiously  enough  was  found  in  his 
tomb.  It  is  this  circumstance  which  furnished  Hero- 
dotus with  the  legend  that  Cambyses  was  unable  to 
draw  the  bow  of  the  king  of  Ethiopia.  Few  or  no 
remnants  of  his  fine  buildings  at  Karnak,  Memphis  and 
Heliopolis  have  survived,  but  in  Nubia,  especially  at 
Kummeh  and  Amada,  more  have  escaped.  Dying  about 
1420  B.  c,  after  a  reign  of  some  twenty -six  years, 
Amenhotep  II  was  interred  like  his  ancestors  in  the 
valley  of  the  kings'  tombs,  where  his  body  rests  to  this 
day,  though  even  now  a  prey  to  the  clever  tomb-robbers 
of  modern  Thebes,  who  in  November,  1901,  forced  the 
tomb  and  cut  through  the  wrappings  of  the  mummy  in 
their  search  for  royal  treasure  on  the  body  of  their 
ancient  ruler.  Their  Theban  ancestors  in  the  same 
craft,  however,  had  three  thousand  years  ago  taken 
good  care  that  nothing  should  be  left  for  their  descend- 
ants (BAR,  II,  803-806;  792,  note  d;  507  /. ;  IV,  499  fj.). 

241.  Amenhotep  II  was  followed  by  his  son,  Thut- 
mose  IV.  It  is  possible  that  this  prince  was  not  at  first 
designed  to  be  his  father's  successor,  if  we  may  believe 
a  folk-tale,  in  circulation  some  centuries  later,  and  now 
recorded  on  the  huge  granite  stela  between  the  forelegs 
of  the  Great  Sphinx.  He  was  early  called  upon  to 
maintain  the  empire  in  Asia,  and  invaded  Naharin, 
returning  with  the  usual  captives  and  plunder,  besides 
a  cargo  of  cedar  for  the  sacred  barge  of  Amon  at 
Thebes.  His  nobles  now  called  him  ''Conqueror  of 
Syria,"  and  the  tribute  of  the  Syrian  princes  was  regu- 
larly sent  in.  To  confirm  his  position  there,  Thutmose 
evidently  desired  a  friend  in  the  north,  for  he  sent  to 
Artatama,  the  Mitannian  king,  and  secured  his  daughter 


248 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


in  marriage.  She  probably  received  an  Egyptian  name, 
Mutemuya,  and  became  the  mother  of  the  next  king  of 
Egypt,  Amenhotep  III.  A  firm  alliance  with  Mitanni 
was  thus  formed,  which  forbade  all  thought  of  future 
conquest  by  the  Pharaoh  east  of  the  Euphrates.  A 
friendly  alliance  was  also  cemented  with  Babylonia. 
The  suppression  of  a  serious  revolt  in  northern  Nubia, 
in  his  eighth  year,  concludes  the  known  wars  of  Thut- 
mose  IV.  It  is  probable  that  he  did  not  long  survive 
this  war,  and  his  most  notable  monument  from  this 
period  is  the  greatest  of  all  obelisks,  a  monument  left 
unfinished  by  his  grandfather  Thutmose  III,  at  Thebes, 
and  now  standing  before  the  Lateran  in  Rome  (BAR, 
11,810-815;  819-822;  824;  826;  829;  830f ;  838;  AL, 
1,1.63;  21,  16-18). 

242.  The  son  w^ho  succeeded  him  was  the  third  of  the 
Amenhoteps  and  the  last  of  the  great  emperors.  He 
was  but  the  great  grandson  of  Thutmose  III,  but  with 
him  the  high  tide  of  Egyptian  power  was  already  slowly 
on  the  ebb,  and  he  was  not  the  man  to  stem  the  tide. 
Already  as  crown  prince,  or  at  least  early  in  his  reign,  he 
married  a  remarkable  woman  of  untitled  parentage, 
named  Tiy.  There  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence  to  prove 
her  of  foreign  birth,  as  is  so  often  claimed.  In  celebra- 
tion of  the  marriage,  Amenhotep  issued  a  large  number 
of  scarabs,  or  sacred  beetles,  carved  in  stone  and 
engraved  with  a  record  of  the  event,  in  which  the  unti- 
tled parentage  of  his  queen  frankly  follows  her  name. 
From  the  beginning  the  new  queen  exerted  a  pow^erful 
influence  over  Amenhotep,  and  he  immediately  inserted 
her  name  in  the  oflScial  caption  placed  at  the  head  of 
royal  documents.  Her  power  continued  throughout  his 
reign,  and  was  the  beginning  of  a  remarkable  era,  char- 
acterized by  the  prominence  of  the  queens  in  state 


THE  EMPIRE  AT  ITS  HEIGHT  249 


affairs  and  on  public  occasions,  a  peculiarity  which  we 
find  only  under  Amenhotep  III  and  his  immediate  suc- 
cessors. The  significance  of  these  events  we  shall  later 
dwell  upon  (BAR,  II,  861  /.) 

243.  In  the  administration  of  his  great  empire 
Amenhotep  III  began  well.  The  Asiatics  gave  him  no 
trouble  at  his  accession,  and  he  ruled  in  security  and 
unparalleled  splendour.  Towards  the  close  of  his 
fourth  year,  however,  trouble  in  Nubia  called  him 
south.  It  was  so  far  up  river  that  he  was  able  to  levy 
forces  for  its  suppression  among  the  northern  Nubians, 
a  striking  evidence  of  the  very  Egyptianized  character 
of  lower  Nubia.  Amenhotep  marched  southward  for 
a  month,  taking  captives  and  spoil  as  he  went,  and 
arriving  finally  at  the  land  of  Uneshek,  perhaps  above 
the  cataracts.  This  marked  his  extreme  southern  ad- 
vance. His  frontier,  however,  was  certainly  not  essen- 
tially in  advance  of  that  of  his  father.  This  was  the 
last  great  invasion  of  Nubia  by  the  Pharaohs.  As  far 
as  the  fourth  cataract  the  country  was  completely  sub- 
jugated, and  as  far  as  the  second  cataract  largely  Egyp- 
tianized, a  process  which  now  went  steadily  forward. 
Eg}'ptian  temples  had  now  sprung  up  at  every  larger 
to-vvm,  and  the  Egyptian  gods  were  worshipped  therein; 
the  Egyptian  arts  were  learned  by  the  Nubian  craftsmen, 
and  everywhere  the  rude  barbarism  of  the  upper  Nile 
was  receiving  the  stamp  of  Egyptian  culture.  Never- 
theless the  native  chieftains,  under  the  surveillance  of 
the  viceroy,  were  still  permitted  to  retain  their  titles  and 
honours,  and  doubtless  continued  to  enjoy  at  least  a 
nominal  share  in  the  government  (BAR,  II,  852-854; 
850;  847  /.;  889;  845;  1037;  1035-1041). 

244.  In  Asia  Amenhotep  enjoyed  unchallenged  su- 
premacy.   All  the  powers:  Babylonia,  Assyria,  Mitan- 


250  THE  EMPIRE    FIRST  PERIOD 


ni  and  Alasa-Cyprus,  were  exerting  every  effort  to  gain 
the  friendship  of  Egypt.  A  scene  of  world  poHtics,  such 
as  is  unknowTi  before  in  history,  now  unfolds  before  us. 
From  the  Pharaoh's  court  as  the  centre  radiate  a  host 
of  lines  of  communication  with  all  the  great  peoples  of 
the  age.  The  Tell  el-x\marna  letters,  perhaps  the  most 
interesting  mass  of  documents  surviving  from  the  early 
East,  have  preserved  to  us  this  glimpse  across  the  king- 
doms of  hither  Asia  as  one  might  see  them  on  a  stage, 
each  king  playing  his  part  before  the  great  throne  of  the 
Pharaoh.  The  letters,  some  three  hundred  in  number, 
written  on  clay  tablets  in  the  Babylonian  cuneiform, 
were  discovered  in  1888  at  Tell  el-Amarna,  from  which 
the  correspondence  takes  its  name.  They  date  from 
the  reign  of  Amenhotep  III  and  that  of  his  son  and  suc- 
cessor, Amenhotep  IV,  or  Ikhnaton,  being  correspond- 
ence of  a  strictly  official  character  between  these  Pha- 
raohs on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  the  kings  of 
Babylonia,  Nineveh,  Mitanni,  Alasa  (Cyprus)  and  the 
Pharaoh's  vassal  kings  of  Syria-Palestine.  Five  letters 
survive  from  the  correspondence  of  Amenhotep  III 
with  Kadashman-Bel  (Kallimma-Sin),  king  of  Baby- 
lonia, one  from  the  Pharaoh  and  the  others  from 
Kadashman-Bel.  The  Babylonian  king  is  constantly 
in  need  of  gold  and  insistently  importunates  his  brother 
of  Egypt  to  send  him  large  quantities  of  the  precious 
metal,  which  he  says  is  as  plentiful  as  dust  in  Egypt 
according  to  the  reports  of  the  Babylonian  messengers. 
Considerable  friction  results  from  the  dissatisfaction  of 
Kadashman-Bel  at  the  amounts  w^ith  which  Amenhotep 
favours  him.  He  refers  to  the  fact  that  Amenhotep  had 
received  from  his  father  a  daughter  in  marriage,  and 
makes  this  relationship  a  reason  for  further  gifts  of 
gold.    As  the  correspondence  goes  on  another  marriage 


THE  EMPIRE  AT  ITS  HEIGHT 


251 


is  negotiated  between  a  daughter  of  Amenhotep  and 
Kallimma-Sin  or  his  son. 

245.  Similarly  Amenhotep  enjoys  the  most  intimate 
connection  with  Shuttarna,  the  king  of  Mitanni,  the 
son  of  Artatama,  with  whom  his  father,  Thutmose  IV, 
had  sustained  the  most  cordial  relations.  Indeed 
Amenhotep  was  perhaps  the  nephew  of  Shuttarna,  from 
whom  he  now,  in  his  tenth  year,  received  a  daughter, 
named  Gilukhipa,  in  marriage.  On  the  death  of  Shut- 
tarna the  alliance  was  continued  under  his  son,  Dush- 
ratta,  from  whom  Amenhotep  later  received,  as  a  wife 
for  his  son  and  successor,  a  second  Mitannian  princess, 
Tadukhipa,  the  daughter  of  Dushratta  (AL,  7;  1-5;  17; 
BAR,  II,  866  /.). 

246.  Similarly  Amenhotep  sent  a  gift  of  twenty 
talents  of  gold  to  the  king  of  Assyria,  and  gained  his 
friendship  also.  The  vassalship  of  the  king  of  Alasa- 
Cyprus  continued,  and  he  regularly  sent  the  Pharaoh 
large  quantities  of  copper,  save  when  on  one  occasion 
he  excuses  himself  because  his  country  had  been  visited 
by  a  pestilence.  So  complete  was  the  understanding 
between  Egypt  and  Cyprus  that  even  the  extradition  of 
the  property  of  a  citizen  of  Cyprus  who  had  died  in 
Egypt  was  regarded  by  the  two  kings  as  a  matter  of 
course  (AL,  23,  30  Jf.;  25,  30  yj.). 

247.  Thus  courted  and  flattered,  the  object  of  diplo- 
matic attention  from  all  the  great  powers,  Amenhotep 
found  little  occasion  for  anxiety  regarding  his  Asiatic 
empire.  The  Syrian  vassals  were  now  the  grandsons 
of  the  men  whom  Thutmose  III  had  conquered;  they 
had  grown  thoroughly  habituated  to  the  Egyptian 
allegiance,  and  it  was  not  without  its  advantages.  An 
Eg\^ptian  education  at  the  Pharaoh's  capital  had, 
moreover,  made  him  many  a  loyal  servant  among  the 


252 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


children  of  the  dynasts.  They  protest  their  fidehty  to  the 
Pharaoh  on  all  occasions,  and  their  letters  were  intro- 
duced by  the  most  abject  and  self-abasing  adulation. 
They  are  "the  ground  upon  which  thou  treadest,  the 
throne  upon  which  thou  sittest,  the  foot-stool  of  thy  feet " ; 
even  "thy  dog'';  and  one  is  pleased  to  call  himself  the 
groom  of  the  Pharaoh's  horse.  The  garrisons  in  the 
larger  towns,  consisting  of  infantry  and  chariotry,  are 
no  longer  solely  native  Egyptians,  but  to  a  large  extent 
Nubians  and  Sherden,  perhaps  the  ancestors  of  the 
historical  Sardinians.  From  now  on  they  took  service 
in  the  Egyptian  army  in  ever  larger  and  larger  num- 
bers. These  forces  of  the  Pharaoh  were  maintained 
by  the  dynasts,  and  one  of  their  self-applied  tests  of 
loyalty  in  wTiting  to  the  Pharaoh  was  their  readiness  and 
faithfulness  in  furnishing  supplies.  Syria  thus  enjoyed 
a  stability  of  government  which  had  never  before  been 
hers.  The  roads  were  safe  from  robbers,  caravans  were 
convoyed  from  vassal  to  vassal,  and  a  word  from  the 
Pharaoh  was  sufficient  to  bring  any  of  his  subject 
princes  to  his  knees.  The  payment  of  tribute  was  as 
regular  as  the  collection  of  taxes  in  Egypt  itself.  But 
in  case  of  any  delay  a  representative  of  the  Pharaoh, 
who  was  stationed  in  the  various  larger  towns,  needed 
but  to  appear  in  the  delinquent's  vicinity  to  recall  the 
unfulfilled  obligation.  Amenhotep  himself  was  never 
obliged  to  carry  on  a  war  in  Asia.  On  one  occasion  he 
appeared  at  Sidon,  but  one  of  the  vassal  princes  later 
wrote  to  x\menhotep's  son:  "Verily,  thy  father  did  not 
march  forth,  nor  inspect  the  lands  of  his  vassal  princes" 
(AL,  138,  4-13;  149,  1-7;  87,  62-64). 

248.  Under  such  circumstances  Amenhotep  was  at 
leisure  to  devote  himself  to  those  enterprises  of  peace 
which  have  occupied  all  emperors  under  similar  conJi- 


THE  EMPIRE  AT  ITS  HEIGHT 


253 


tions.  Trade  now  developed  as  never  before.  The 
Nile  was  alive  with  the  freight  of  all  the  world,  flowing 
into  it  from  the  Red  Sea  fleets  and  from  long  caravans 
passing  back  and  forth  through  the  Isthmus  of  Suez, 
bearing  the  rich  stuffs  of  Syria,  the  spices  and  aromatic 
woods  of  the  East,  the  weapons  and  chased  vessels  of 
the  Phoenicians,  and  a  myriad  of  other  things,  which 
brought  their  Semitic  names  into  the  hieroglyphic  and 
their  use  into  the  life  of  the  Xile-dwellers.  Parallel 
with  the  land  traffic  through  the  isthmus  were  the  routes 
of  commerce  on  the  Mediterranean,  thickly  dotted  with 
the  richly  laden  galleys  of  Phoenicia,  converging  upon 
the  Delta  from  all  quarters  and  bringing  to  the  markets 
of  the  Nile  the  decorated  vessels  of  damascened  bronzes 
from  the  Mycenaean  industrial  settlements  of  the 
iEgean.  The  products  of  Egyptian  industry  were  like- 
wise in  use  in  the  palace  of  the  sea-kings  of  Cnossos,  in 
Rhodes,  and  in  Cyprus,  where  a  number  of  Egyptian 
monuments  of  this  age  have  been  found.  Scarabs  and 
bits  of  glazed  ware  with  the  names  of  Amenhotep  II, 
Amenhotep  III  or  Queen  Tiy  have  also  been  discovered 
on  the  mainland  of  Greece  at  Mycenae.  The  northern 
Mediterranean  peoples  were  feeling  the  impact  of 
Egyptian  civilization  with  more  emphasis  than  ever 
before.  In  Crete,  Egyptian  religious  forms  had  been 
introduced,  in  one  case  under  the  personal  leadership 
of  an  Egyptian  priest  bearing  an  Egyptian  sistrum. 
Mycenaean  artists  were  pow^erfully  influenced  by  the  in- 
coming products  of  Egypt.  Egyptian  landscapes  ap- 
pear in  their  metal  work,  and  the  lithe  animal  forms  in 
instantaneous  postures,  caught  by  the  pencil  of  the 
Theban  artist,  w^ere  now  common  in  Mycenae.  The 
superb  decorated  ceilings  of  Thebes  likewise  appear  in 
the  tombs  of  Mycenae  and  Orchomenos.    Even  the  pre- 


254 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


Greek  writing  of  Crete  shows  traces  of  the  influence  of 
the  hieroglyphics  of  the  Nile.  The  men  of  the  My- 
cenaean world,  the  Keftyew,  were  now  a  familiar  sight 
upon  the  streets  of  Thebes,  where  the  wares  which  they 
offered  were  also  modifying  the  art  of  Egypt.  The 
plentiful  silver  of  the  north  now  came  in  with  the 
northern  strangers  in  great  quantities,  and,  although 
under  the  Hyksos  the  baser  metal  had  been  worth  twice 
as  much  as  gold,  the  latter  now  and  permanently  became 
the  more  valuable  medium.  The  ratio  was  now  about 
one  and  two-thirds  to  one,  and  the  value  of  silver 
steadily  fell  until  Ptolemaic  times  (third  century  b.  c.  on), 
when  the  ratio  was  twelve  to  one.  Such  trade  required 
protection  and  regulation.  Against  the  bold  Lycian 
pirates  Amenhotep  was  obliged  to  develop  a  marine 
police  which  constantly  patrolled  the  coast  of  the 
Delta.  Here  and  at  all  frontiers  custom  houses  were 
also  maintained,  and  all  merchandise  not  consigned  to 
the  king  was  dutiable  (AL,  87,  62-^4;  28;  29;  32;  33; 
BAR,  II,  916, 11.  33  /.). 

249.  The  influx  of  slaves,  chiefly  of  Semitic  race, 
still  continued,  and  the  king's  chief  scribe  distributed 
them  throughout  the  land  and  enrolled  them  among 
the  tax-paying  serfs.  As  this  host  of  foreigners  inter- 
married with  the  natives,  the  large  infusion  of  strange 
blood  began  to  make  itself  felt  in  a  new  and  composite 
type  of  face,  if  we  may  trust  the  artists  of  the  day.  The 
incalculable  wealth  which  had  now  been  converging 
upon  the  coffers  of  the  Pharaoh  for  over  a  century  also 
began  to  exert  a  profound  influence,  which,  as  under 
like  conditions,  in  later  history,  was  far  from  wholesome. 
On  New  Year's  Day  the  king  presented  his  nobles  with 
a  profusion  of  costly  gifts  which  would  have  amazed  the 
Pharaohs  of  the  pyramid-age.    The  luxury  and  display 


THE  EMPIRE  AT  ITS  HEIGHT 


255 


of  the  metropolis  supplanted  the  old  rustic  simplicity 
and  sturdy  elemental  virtues.  A  noble  of  the  landed 
class  from  the  time  of  the  Amenemhets  or  the  Sesos- 
trises,  could  he  have  walked  the  streets  of  Thebes  in 
Amenhotep  Ill's  reign,  would  almost  have  been  at  a 
loss  to  know  in  what  country  he  had  suddenly  found  him- 
self; while  his  own  antiquated  costume,  which  had 
survived  only  among  the  priests,  would  have  awakened 
equal  astonishment  among  the  fashionable  Thebans 
of  the  day.  He  would  not  have  felt  less  strange  than  a 
noble  of  Elizabeth's  reign  upon  the  streets  of  modern 
London.  "\Miere  once  w^as  a  provincial  village  he 
would  now  have  found  elegant  chateaus  and  luxurious 
villas,  with  charming  gardens  and  summer-houses 
grouped  about  vast  temples,  such  as  the  Nile-dweller 
had  never  seen  before  (BAR,  II,  916,  11.  31-33,  36; 
801  I). 

250.  The  wealth  and  the  captive  labour  of  Asia  and 
Xubia  were  being  rapidly  transmuted  into  noble  archi- 
tecture, on  a  scale  of  size  and  grandeur  surpassing  all 
precedent,  and  at  Thebes  a  new  fundamental  chapter  in 
the  history  of  the  world's  architecture  was  being  daily 
\sTitten.  Amenhotep  supported  his  architects  with  all 
his  unparalleled  resources.  There  were  among  them 
men  of  the  highest  gifts,  like  "Amenhotep,  son  of 
Hapu,"  whose  wisdom  circulated  in  Greek  some  twelve 
hundred  years  later  among  the  "  Proverbs  of  the  Seven 
Wise  ]Men, "  till  it  gained  him  a  place  among  the  gods. 
(BAR,  II,  911).  Despite  the  vast  dimensions  of  the  im- 
perial buildings,  the  smaller  of  the  two  forms  of  temple 
which  now  developed  is  nat  less  effective  than  the  larger. 
It  was  a  simple  rectangular  cella  or  holy  of  holies, 
thirty  or  forty  feet  long  and  fourteen  feet  high,  with  a 
door  at  each  end,  surrounded  by  colonnades,  the  whole 


256  THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


being  flat-roofed  and  raised  upon  a  base  of  about  half 
the  height  of  the  temple  walls.  AVith  the  door  looking 
out  between  two  graceful  columns,  and  the  fa9ade 
happily  set  in  the  retreating  vistas  of  the  side  colonnades, 
the  whole  is  so  finely  proportioned  and  boldly  conceived 
that  the  trained  eye  immediately  recognizes  the  hand  of 
a  master  who  appreciated  and  depended  upon  simple, 
fundamental  lines  of  structural  origin  and  significance. 
The  other  and  larger  type  of  temple,  which  now  found 
its  highest  development,  differs  strikingly  fr(7m  the  one 
just  discussed;  and  perhaps  most  fundamentally  in  the 
fact  that  its  colonnades  are  all  within  and  not  visible 
from  the  outside.  The  holy  of  holies  at  the  rear  is 
surrounded,  as  of  old,  by  a  series  of  chambers,  now 
larger  than  before,  as  rendered  necessary  by  the  rich  and 
elaborate  ritual  which  had  arisen.  Before  it  is  a  large 
colonnaded  hall,  often  called  the  hypostyle,  while  in 
front  of  this  hall  lies  an  extensive  forecourt  surrounded 
by  a  columned  portico.  In  front  of  this  court  rise  two 
towers  (together  called  a  "pylon"),  which  form  the 
fa9ade  of  the  temple.  Their  outer  walls  incline  inward, 
they  are  crowned  by  a  hollow  cornice,  and  the  great  door 
of  the  temple  opens  between  them.  While  the  masonry, 
which  is  of  sandstone  or  limestone,  does  not  usually 
contain  large  blocks,  huge  architraves,  thirty  or  forty 
feet  long  and  weighing  one  or  two  hundred  tons,  are  not 
unknown.  Nearly  all  the  surfaces,  except  those  on  the 
columns,  are  carved  with  reliefs,  the  outside  showing  the 
king  in  battle,  while  on  the  inside  he  appears  in  the 
worship  of  the  gods,  and  all  surfaces  with  slight  excep- 
tion were  highly  coloured.  Before  the  vast  double 
doors  of  cedar  of  Lebanon  mounted  in  bronze,  rose,  one 
on  either  side,  a  pair  of  obelisks,  towering  high  above 
the  pylon-towers,  while  colossal  statues  of  the  king,  each 


THE  EMPIRE  AT  ITS  HEIGHT 


257 


Hewn  from  a  single  block,  were  placed  with  backs  to  the 
pylon,  on  either  side  of  the  door.  In  the  use  of  these 
elements  and  this  general  arrangement  of  the  parts, 
aheady  common  before  Amenhotep's  reign,  his  archi- 
tects now  created  a  radically  new  type,  destined  to  sur- 
vive in  frequent  use  to  this  day  as  ^ne  of  the  noblest 
forms  of  architecture. 

251.  At  Luxor,  the  old  southern  suburb  of  lucbes, 
his  architects  laid  out  a  superb  forecourt  of  the  temple 
of  Amon,  in  front  of  which  they  planned  a  new  and 
more  ambitious  hall  than  had  evei  been  attempted 
before.  The  great  hall  was  laid  cut  with  a  row  of 
gigantic  columns,  yet  displaying  faultless  proportions 
ranged  on  either  side  the  central  axis.  These,  the  lofti- 
est columns  yet  attempted,  with  capitals  of  the  graceful 
spreading  papyrus-flower  type,  were  higher  than  those 
ranged  on  both  sides  of  the  middle,  thus  producing  a 
higher  roof  over  a  central  aisle  or  nave  and  a  lower  roof 
over  the  side  aisles,  the  difference  in  level  to  be  filled 
^s-ith  grated  stone  windows  in  a  clear-story.  Thus  were 
produced  the  fundamental  elements  in  basilica  and 
cathedral  architecture.  Unfortunately  the  vast  hall 
was  unfinished  at  the  death  of  the  king,  and  the  whole 
stands  to-day  a  mournful  WTCck  of  an  unfinished  work 
of  art,  the  first  example  of  a  now  universal  type  of  great 
architecture,  for  which  w^e  are  indebted  to  Egypt  and 
the  Theban  architects  of  Amenhotep  III. 

252.  Amenhotep  now  proceeded  to  give  the  great 
buildings  of  the  city  a  unity  which  they  had  not  before 
possessed.  Approaching  the  gorgeous  pylon  which  he 
set  up  in  front  of  the  Karnak  temple,  an  avenue  led  up 
from  the  river  between  two  tall  obelisks,  w^hich  flanked 
a  colossal  portrait  statue  of  the  Pharaoh,  hewn  from  a 
single  block  sixty-seven  feet  long.    Through  the  beautJ- 


258 


THE  EMPIRE:    FIRST  PERIOD 


ful  gardens,  with  which  he  united  Karnak  and  Luxe:, 
avenues  of  sculptured  rams  connected  the  great  temples. 
The  general  effect  must  have  been  imposing  in  the 
extreme;  the  brilliant  hues  of  the  polychrome  architect- 
ure, with  columns  and  gates  overwrought  in  gold,  and 
floor'"  3rlaid  with  silver,  the  whole  dominated  by  tower- 
ing obelisks  clothed  in  glittering  metal,  rising  high  above 
the  rich  green  cf  the  nodding  palms  and  tropical  foli- 
age which  framed  the  mass,  or  mirrored  in  the  surface  of 
the  temple  lake — all  this  must  have  produced  an  im- 
pression both  of  gorfireous  detail  and  overwhelming 
grandeur,  of  which  the  sombre  ruins  of  the  same  build- 
ings, impressive  as  they  are,  offer  little  hint  at  the 
present  day  (BAR,  II,  903;  917). 

253.  Thebes  was  thus  rapidly  becoming  a  worthy 
seat  of  empire,  the  first  monumental  city  of  antiquity. 
Nor  did  the  western  plain  on  the  other  side  of  the  river, 
behind  which  the  conquerors  slept,  suffer  by  comparison 
with  the  new  glories  of  Karnak  and  Luxor.  Along  the 
foot  of  the  rugged  cliffs,  from  the  modest  chapel  of 
Amenhotep  I  cn  the  north,  there  stretched  southward  in 
an  imposing  line  the  mortuary  temples  of  the  emperors. 
At  the  south  end  of  this  line,  but  a  little  nearer  the  river, 
Amenhotep  III  now  erected  his  own  mortuary  sanctuary, 
the  largest  temple  of  his  reign,  the  prodigal  magnificence 
of  which  defies  description.  But  this  sumptuous  build- 
ing, probably  the  greatest  work  of  art  ever  wrought  in 
Egypt,  has  vanished  utterly.  Only  the  two  weather- 
beaten  colossi  which  guarded  the  entrance  still  look  out 
across  the  plain,  one  of  them  still  bearing  the  scribblings 
in  Greek  of  curious  tourists  in  the  times  of  the  Roman 
Empire  who  came  to  hear  the  marvellous  voice  which 
issued  from  it  every  morning  (BAR,  II,  904       878  ff.). 

254.  Adorned  with  such  works  as  these  the  western 


THE  EMPIRE  AT  ITS  HEIGHT 


259 


plain  of  Thebes  was  a  majestic  prospect  as  the  observer 
advanced  from  the  river,  ascending  Amenhotep's  avenue 
of  sculptured  jackals,  between  the  two  seven-hundred 
ton  colossi  of  the  king,  towering  above  the  temple. 
On  the  left,  behind  the  temple  and  nearer  the  chffs, 
appeared  a  palace  of  the  king  of  rectangular  wooden 
architecture  in  bright  colours;  very  light  and  airv,  and 
having  over  the  front  entrance  a  gorgeous  cushioned 
balcony  with  graceful  columns,  in  which  the  king  showed 
himself  to  his  favourites  on  occasion.  Innumerable 
products  of  the  industrial  artist  which  fill  the  museums 
of  Europe  indicate  with  what  tempered  richness  and 
delicate  beauty  such  a  royal  chateau  was  furnished  and 
adorned.  Magnificent  vessels  in  gold  and  silver,  with 
figures  of  men  and  animals,  plants  and  flowers  rising 
from  the  rim,  glittered  on  the  king's  table  among 
crystal  goblets,  glass  vases,  and  gray  porcelain  vessels 
inlaid  with  pale  blue  designs.  The  walls  were  covered 
with  woven  tapestry  which  skilled  judges  have  declared 
equal  to  the  best  modern  work.  Besides  painted  pave- 
ments depicting  animal  life,  the  walls  also  were  adorned 
with  blue  glazed  tiles,  the  rich  colour  of  which  shone 
through  elaborate  designs  in  gold  leaf,  while  glazed 
figures  were  employed  in  encrusting  larger  surfaces.  All 
this  was  done  with  fine  and  intelligent  consideration  of 
the  whole  colour  scheme.  The  fine  taste  and  the 
technical  skill  required  for  all  such  supplementary 
works  of  the  craftsman  were  now  developed  to  a  point 
of  classical  excellence,  beyond  which  Egyptian  art  never 
passed. 

255.  Sculpture  also  flourished  under  such  circum- 
stances as  never  before.  While  there  now  -^.eveioped 
an  attention  to  details  which  required  infinite  patience 
and  nicety,  such  arduous  application  did  not  hamper  the 


260  THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


fine  feeling  of  which  these  Eighteenth  Dynasty  sculptors 
were  capable.  They  thus  interpreted  and  expressed 
individuality  with  a  keen  insight,  a  subtle  refinement 
and  an  individual  power,  which  endued  their  portraits 
with  a  personality  and  a  winning  grace  far  surpassing 
all  earlier  works.  The  perfection  attained  in  the 
sculpture  of  animal  forms  by  the  artists  of  this  time 
marks  the  highest  level  of  achievement  attained  by 
Egyptian  art  herein,  and  Ruskin  has  even  insisted  with 
his  customary  conviction  that  the  two  lions  of  Amen- 
hotep's  reign,  now  in  the  British  Museum,  are  the  finest 
embodiment  of  animal  majesty  which  has  survived  to 
us  from  any  ancient  people.  Especially  in  relief  were 
the  artists  of  this  age  masters.  In  a  fragment  now  in 
the  Berlin  Museum,  the  abandoned  grief  of  the  two 
sons  of  the  High  Priest  of  Memphis  as  they  follow  their 
father's  body  to  the  tomb,  is  effectively  contrasted  with 
the  severe  gravity  and  conventional  decorum  of  the 
great  ministers  of  state  behind  them,  who  themselves 
are  again  in  striking  contrast  with  a  Beau  Brummel  of 
that  day,  as  he  affectedly  arranges  the  perfumed  curls 
of  his  elaborate  wig.  Here  across  thirty-five  centuries 
there  speaks  to  us  a  maturity  in  the  contemplation  of 
life  which  finds  a  sympathetic  response  in  every  culti- 
vated observer.  This  fragmentary  sketch  belongs  to  a 
class  of  work  totally  lacking  in  other  lands  in  this  age. 
It  is  one  of  the  earliest  examples  of  sculpture  exhibiting 
that  interpretation  of  life  and  appreciation  of  individual 
traits  (often  supposed  to  have  arisen  first  among  the 
sculptors  of  Greece),  in  which  art  finds  its  highest 
expression. 

256.  Now,  too,  the  Pharaoh's  deeds  of  prowess  in- 
spired the  sculptors  of  the  time  to  more  elaborate 
compositions  than  had  ever  before  been  approached. 


THE  EMPIRE  AT  ITS  HEIGHT 


261 


The  battle  scenes  on  the  noble  chariot  of  Thutmose  IV 
exhibit  a  complexity  in  drawing  and  composition  un- 
precedented, and  this  tendency  continues  in  the  Nine- 
teenth Dynasty.  Of  the  painting  of  the  time,  the  best 
examples  were  in  the  palaces,  and  these  being  of  wood 
and  sun-dried  brick,  have  perished,  but  a  fine  percep- 
tion, which  enabled  the  artist  in  his  representation  of 
animals  and  birds  to  depict  instantaneous  postureS;  is 
already  observable,  reaching  its  highest  expression  in 
the  next  reign.  In  such  an  age  Hterature  doubtless 
throve,  but  chance  has  unfortunately  preserved  to  us 
little  of  the  literature  of  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty. 
There  is  a  triumphant  hymn  to  Thutmose  III,  and  we 
shall  read  the  remarkable  sun-hymn  of  Ikhnaton;  but 
of  narrative,  song  and  legend,  which  must  have  flour- 
ished from  the  rise  of  the  Empire,  our  surviving  docu- 
ments date  almost  exclusively  from  the  Nineteenth 
Dynasty. 

257.  Near  his  palace  in  western  Thebes  Amenhotep 
laid  out  an  exclusive  quarter  which  he  gave  to  his  queen 
Tiy.  He  excavated  a  large  lake  in  the  enclosure  about 
a  mile  long  and  over  a  thousand  feet  wide,  and  at  the 
celebration  of  his  coronation  anniversary  in  his  twelfth 
year  he  opened  the  sluices  for  filling  it,  and  sailed  out 
upon  it  in  the  royal  barge  with  his  queen,  in  a  gorgeous 
festival  ''fantasia."  Such  festivals  were  now  common 
in  Thebes,  and  enriched  the  life  of  the  fast  growing 
metropolis  with  a  kaleidoscopic  variety  which  may  be 
only  compared  with  similar  periods  in  Babylon  or  in 
Rome  under  the  emperors.  The  religious  feasts  of  the 
seventh  month  were  celebrated  with  such  opulent 
splendour  that  the  month  quickly  gained  the  epithet, 
"That  of  Amenhotep,"  a  designation  which  still  sur- 
vives among  the  natives  of  modern  Egypt,  who  employ 


262 


THJhJ  EMPIRE:   FIRST  PERIOD 


it  without  the  faintest  knowledge  of  the  imperial  ruler, 
their  ancestor,  whose  name  is  perpetuated  in  it. 

258.  Among  the  king's  favourite  diversions  was  the 
hunt,  which  he  practised  on  an  unprecedented  scale. 
He  slew  as  many  as  seventy-six  wild  cattle  in  one  expedi- 
tion, and  in  the  first  ten  years  of  his  reign  he  had  slain  one 
hundred  and  two  lions.  In  celebration  of  these  exploits 
and  of  such  events  as  the  dedication  of  the  sacred  lake 
the  king  issued  each  time  a  series  of  commemorative 
scarabs  (see  p.  248).  It  will  be  seen  that  in  these  things 
a  new  and  modern  tendency  was  coming  to  its  own. 
The  divine  Pharaoh  is  constantly  being  exhibited  in 
common  human  relations,  the  affairs  of  the  royal  house 
are  made  public  property,  the  name  of  the  queen,  not 
even  a  woman  of  royal  birth,  is  constantly  appearing  at 
the  head  of  official  documents  side  by  side  with  that  of 
the  Pharaoh.  In  constant  intercourse  with  the  nations 
of  Asia  he  is  gradually  forced  from  his  old  superhuman 
state,  suited  only  to  the  Nile,  into  less  provincial  and 
more  modern  relations  with  his  neighbours  of  Babylon 
and  Mitanni,  who  in  their  letters  call  him  '^brother." 
This  lion-hunting,  bull-baiting  Pharaoh  is  far  indeed 
from  the  godlike  and  unapproachable  immobility  of  his 
divine  ancestors.  ^ATiether  consciously  or  not  he  had 
assumed  a  modern  stand-point,  which  must  inevitably 
lead  to  sharp  conflict  with  the  almost  irresistible  inertia 
of  tradition  in  an  Oriental  country  (BAR,  II,  865;  868 
/.;  863/.;  880,  note  a;  893^.). 

259.  Presiding  over  the  magnificence  of  Thebes,  the 
now  aging  Amenhotep  had  celebrated  his  third  jubilee 
when  ominous  signs  of  trouble  appeared  on  the  northern 
horizon.  Mitanni  was  invaded  by  the  Hittites  (Kheta), 
and  the  provinces  of  Egypt  on  the  lower  Orontes  were 
not  spared.    The  situation  was  complicated  by  the 


THE  EMPIRE  AT  ITS  HEIGHT 


263 


connivance  of  treacherous  vassals  of  the  Pharaoh,  who 
were  themseh^es  attempting  the  conquest  of  territory  on 
their  ovm  account,  even  threatening  Ubi,  the  region  of 
Damascus.  "While  the  Hittites  thus  secured  a  footing  in 
northern  Naharin  of  the  greatest  value  in  their  further 
plans  for  the  conquest  of  Syria,  an  invasion  of  the 
Khabiri,  desert  Semites,  such  as  had  periodically  inun- 
dated Syria  and  Palestine  from  time  immemorial,  was 
also  now  taking  place.  It  was  of  such  proportions  that 
it  may  fairly  be  called  an  immigration.  Before  Amen- 
hotep  Ill's  death  it  had  become  threatening,  and  thus 
Ribaddi  of  Byblos  later  wrote  to  Amenhotep  Ill's  son: 
"Since  thy  father  returned  from  Sidon,  since  that  time 
the  lands  have  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  Khabiri" 
(BAR,  II,  870-873;  AL,  16,  30-37;  138  rev.  11.  5,  18- 
31,  37;  83,  28-33;  94,  13-18;  69,  71-73). 

260.  Under  such  ominous  conditions  as  these  the  old 
Pharaoh,  whom  we  may  w^ell  call  ''Amenhotep  the 
Magnificent,"  drew  near  his  end.  His  brother  of 
Mitanni,  with  whom  he  was  still  on  terms  of  intimacy, 
probably  knowing  of  his  age  and  weakness,  sent  the 
captured  image  of  Ishtar  of  Nineveh  for  the  second 
time  to  Egypt,  doubtless  in  the  hope  that  the  far-famed 
goddess  might  be  able  to  exorcise  the  evil  spirits  which 
w^ere  causing  Amenhotep's  infirmity  and  restore  the  old 
king  to  health.  But  all  such  means  were  of  no  avail,  and 
about  1375  b.  c,  after  nearly  thirty-six  years  upon  the 
throne,  "Amenhotep  the  Magnificent"  passed  away, 
and  was  buried  with  the  other  emperors,  his  fathers,  in 
the  Valley  of  the  Kings'  Tombs  (AL,  20). 


XVIII 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  IKHNATON 

261.  No  nation  ever  stood  in  direr  need  of  a  strong 
and  practical  ruler  than  did  Egypt  at  the  death  of  Amen- 
hotep  III.  Yet  she  chanced  to  be  ruled  at  this  fatal 
crisis  by  a  young  dreamer,  who,  in  spite  of  unprece- 
dented greatness  in  the  world  of  ideas,  was  not  fitted  to 
cope  with  a  difficult  situation  demanding  an  aggressive 
man  of  affairs  and  a  skilled  military  leader.  The  con- 
flict of  new  forces  with  tradition  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
already  felt  by  his  father.  The  task  before  him  was 
such  manipulation  of  these  conflicting  forces  as  might 
eventually  give  reasonable  play  to  the  new  and  modern 
tendency,  but  at  the  same  time  to  conserve  enough  of  the 
old  to  prevent  a  catastrophe.  It  was  a  problem  of 
practical  statesmanship.  His  mothe^',  Tiy,  and  his 
queen,  Nofretete,  perhaps  a  woman  of  Asiatic  birth,  and 
a  favourite  priest,  Eye,  the  husband  of  his  childhood 
nurse,  formed  his  immediate  circle.  The  first  two  were 
given  a  prominent  share  in  the  government,  and  in  a 
ma  ner  quite  surpassing  his  father's  similar  tendency, 
he  constantly  appeared  in  public  with  both  his  mother 
and  his  wife.  With  such  effeminate  counsellors  about 
him,  instead  of  gathering  the  army  so  sadly  needed  in 
Naharin,  Amenhotep  IV  immersed  himself  heart  and 
soul  in  the  thought  of  the  time,  and  the  philosophizing 
theology  of  the  priests  was  of  more  importance  to  him 

264 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTIOX  OF  IKHNATOX  265 

than  all  the  provinces  of  Asia.  In  such  contemplations 
he  gradually  developed  ideals  and  purposes  which  make 
him  the  most  remarkable  of  all  the  Pharaohs,  and  the 
first  individual  in  human  history. 

262.  The  profound  influence  of  Egypt's  imperial 
position  had  not  been  limited  to  the  externals  of  life,  to 
the  manners  and  customs  of  the  people,  to  the  rich  and 
prolific  art,  but  had  extended  likewise  to  the  thought  of 
the  age.  Even  before  the  conquests  in  Asia  the  priests 
had  made  great  progress  in  the  interpretation  of  the 
gods,  and  they  had  now  reached  a  stage  in  which,  like 
the  Greeks,  they  were  importing  semi-philosophical 
significance  into  the  myths,  such  as  these  had  of  course 
not  originally  possessed.  The  interpretation  of  a  god 
was  naturally  suggested  by  his  place  or  function  in  the 
myth.  Thus  Ptah,  the  artificer-god  of  Memphis,  had 
been  from  the  remotest  ages  the  god  of  the  architect  and 
craftsman,  to  whom  he  communicated  plans  and  designs 
for  architectural  works  and  the  products  of  the  industrial 
arts.  Contemplating  this  god,  the  Memphite  priest, 
little  used  as  his  mind  was  to  abstractions,  found  a 
tangible  channel,  moving  along  which  he  gradually 
gained  a  rational  and  with  certain  limitations  a  philoso- 
phical conception  of  the  world.  The  workshop  of  the 
Memphite  temple,  where,  under  Ptah's  guidance,  were 
wrought  the  splendid  statues,  utensils  and  offerings  for 
the  temple,  expands  into  a  world,  and  Ptah,  its  lord, 
grows  into  the  master-workman  of  the  universal  work- 
shop. As  he  furnishes  all  designs  to  the  architect  and 
craftsman,  so  nov/  he  does  the  same  for  all  men  in  all 
that  they  do;  he  becomes  the  supreme  mind;  he  is 
mind,  and  all  things  proceed  from  him.  Gods  and  men, 
the  world  and  all  that  is  in  it  first  existed  as  thought  in 
his  mind;  and  his  thoughts,  like  his  plans  for  buildings 


266 


THE  EMPIRE:    FIRST  PERIOD 


and  works  of  art,  needed  but  to  be  expressed  in  spoken 
words  to  take  concrete  form  as  material  realities. 
Thus  the  efficient  force  by  which  this  intelligence  put 
his  designs  into  execution  was  his  spoken  "word/'  and 
this  primitive  logos"  is  undoubtedly  the  incipient 
germ  of  the  later  logos-doctrine  which  found  its  origin 
in  Egypt.  Early  Greek  philosophy  may  also  have 
drawn  upon  it  (AZ,  39,  39  ff.). 

263.  Similar  ideas  were  now  being  propagated  re- 
garding all  the  greater  gods  of  Egypt,  but  the  activity 
of  such  a  god  had  been  limited,  in  their  thinking,  to  the 
confines  of  the  Pharaoh's  domain,  and  the  world  of 
which  they  thought  meant  no  more.  From  of  old  the 
Pharaoh  was  the  heir  of  the  gods  and  ruled  the  two 
kingdoms  of  the  upper  and  lower  river  which  they  had 
once  ruled.  Thus  they  had  not  in  the  myths  extended 
their  dominion  beyond  the  river  valley.  But  under  the 
Empire  all  this  is  changed,  the  god  goes  where  the 
Pharaoh's  sword  carries  him;  the  advance  of  the  Pha- 
raoh's boundary-tablets  in  Nubia  and  Syria  is  the  ex- 
tension of  the  god's  domain.  Thus,  for  king  and  priest 
alike,  the  world  was  becoming  only  a  great  domain  of 
the  god.  The  theological  theory  of  the  state  is  simply 
that  the  king  receives  the  world  that  he  may  deliver  it 
to  the  god,  and  he  prays  for  extended  conquests  that  the 
dominion  of  the  god  may  be  correspondingly  extended. 
It  can  be  no  accident  that  the  notion  of  a  practically 
universal  god  arose  in  Egypt  at  the  moment  when  he 
was  receiving  universal  tribute  from  the  world  of  that 
day.  Similarly  the  analogy  of  the  Pharaoh's  power 
unquestionably  operated  powerfully  with  the  Egyptian 
theologian  at  this  time;  for  as  in  the  myth-making  days 
the  gods  were  conceived  as  Pharaohs  ruling  the  Nile 
valley,  because  the  myth-makers  lived  under  Pharaohs 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  IKHNATON  267 


who  so  ruled;  so  now,  living  under  Pharaohs  who 
ruled  a  world-empire,  the  priest  of  the  imperial  age  had 
before  him  in  tangible  form  a  world-dominion  and  a 
world-concept,  the  prerequisite  of  the  notion  of  the 
world-god.  Conquered  and  organized  and  governed, 
it  had  now  been  before  him  for  two  hundred  years,  and 
out  of  the  Pharaoh-ruled  world  he  gradually  began  to  see 
the  world-god  (BAR,  II,  770;  959, 1.  3;  1000;  III,  80). 

264.  ^Miile  many  local  gods,  especially  Amon  claimed 
precedence  as  the  state  god,  none  of  the  old  divinities  of 
Eg}'pt  had  been  proclaimed  the  god  of  the  Empire, 
although  in  fact  the  priesthood  of  Heliopolis  had  gained 
the  coveted  honour  for  their  revered  sun-god.  Re, 
who  indeed  enjoyed  the  best  historical  title  to  the  dis- 
tinction. Already  under  Amenhotep  III  an  old  name 
for  the  material  sun,  "Aton,"  had  come  into  prominent 
use,  where  the  name  of  the  sun-god  might  have  been 
expected.  The  sun-god,  too,  had  now  and  again  been 
designated  as  ''the  sole  god"  by  Amenhotep  Ill's  con- 
temporaries. Under  the  name  of  Aton,  Amenhotep  IV 
introduced  the  worship  of  the  supreme  god.  While  he 
made  no  attempt  to  conceal  the  identity  of  his  new 
deity  with  the  old  sun-god.  Re,  it  was  not  merely  sun- 
worship;  the  word  Aton  w^as  employed  in  place  of  the 
old  word  for  "god'*  (nuter),  and  the  god  is  clearly  dis- 
tinguished from  the  material  sun.  To  the  old  sun- 
god's  name  is  appended  the  explanatory  phrase  ''under 
his  name:  'Heat  which  is  in  the  Sun  [Aton],"'  and  he 
is  likewise  called  "lord  of  the  sun  [Aton]."  The  king, 
therefore,  w^as  deifying  the  vital  heat  which  he  found 
accompanying  aU  life.  Thence,  as  we  might  expect, 
the  god  is  stated  to  be  everywhere  active  by  means  of 
his  "  rays."  In  his  age  of  the  world  it  is  perfectly  certain 
that  the  king  could  not  have  had  the  vaguest  notion  of 


268  THE  EMPIRE:    FIRST  PERIOD 


the  physico-chemical  aspects  of  his  assumption  any  more 
than  had  the  early  Greeks  in  dealing  with  a  similar 
thought.  The  outward  symbol  of  his  god,  a  disk  in  the 
heavens,  darting  earthward  numerous  diverging  rays 
which  terminate  in  hands,  each  grasping  the  symbol  of 
life,  broke  sharply  with  tradition,  but  it  was  capable  of 
practical  introduction  in  the  many  different  nations 
making  up  the  empire,  and  could  be  understood  at  a 
glance  by  any  intelligent  foreigner  (BAR,  II,  869;  945; 
934, 1.  2;  987,  note  e). 

265.  The  new  god  could  not  dispense  with  a  temple, 
and  early  in  the  new  king's  reign  arose  a  stately  sanctuary 
of  Aton  called  "Gem-Aton"  between  Karnak  and 
Luxor,  in  a  new  quarter  now  called  "Brightness  of 
Aton  the  Great."  Although  the  other  gods  were  still 
tolerated  as  of  old,  it  was  nevertheless  inevitable  that  the 
priesthood  of  Amon  should  view  with  growing  jealousy 
the  brilliant  rise  of  a  strange  god  in  their  midst.  The 
priesthood  of  Amon  was  now  a  rich  and  powerful  body. 
Besides  being  supreme  head  of  the  national  sacerdotal 
organization,  their  High  Priest  was  often  grand  vizier 
and  wielded  the  widest  political  power.  They  had 
installed  Thutmose  III  as  king,  and  could  they  have 
supplanted  with  one  of  their  own  tools  the  young 
dreamer  who  now  held  the  throne  they  would  of  course 
have  done  so  at  the  first  opportunity.  But  besides  the 
prestige  of  his  great  line,  Amenhotep  IV  possessed 
unlimited  personal  force  of  character,  and  he  was  of 
course  supported  in  his  opposition  of  Amon  by  the  older 
priesthoods  of  the  north  at  Memphis  and  Heliopolis, 
long  jealous  of  this  interloper,  the  obscure  Theban  god, 
who  had  never  been  heard  of  in  the  north  before  the 
rise  of  the  Middle  Kingdom.  A  conflict  to  the  bitter 
end,  with  the  most  disastrous  results  to  the  Amonite 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  IKHXATON  269 


priesthood  ensued.  Exasperated  by  opposition  the 
young  Pharaoh  broke  with  the  priesthoods;  including 
that  of  Amon,  they  were  dispossessed,  the  official  temple- 
worship  of  the  various  gods  throughout  the  land  ceased, 
and  their  names  were  erased  wherever  they  could  be 
found  upon  the  monuments.  Even  the  word  ''gods" 
was  not  permitted  to  appear  anywhere,  and  the  walls 
of  the  temples  at  Thebes  were  painfully  searched  that 
wherever  the  compromising  word  appeared  it  might  be 
blotted  out.  What  was  worse,  as  the  name  of  the 
king's  father,  Amenhotep,  contained  the  name  of  Amon, 
the  young  king  was  placed  in  the  unpleasant  predica- 
ment of  heincr  obliged  to  cut  out  his  own  father's  name 
in  order  to  prevent  the  name  of  Amon  from  appearing 
''writ  large"  on  all  the  temples  of  Thebes.  And  then 
there  was  the  embarrassment  of  the  king's  own  name, 
likewise  Amenhotep,  "Amon  rests,"  which  could  not 
be  spoken  or  placed  on  a  monument.  It  was  of  neces- 
sity also  banished,  and  the  king  assumed  in  its  place 
the  name  "Ikhnaton,"  which  means  "Spirit  of  Aton" 
(BAR,  II,  935;  942,  note  b;  937;  944-947). 

266.  Thebes  was  now  compromised  by  too  many  old 
associations  to  be  a  congenial  place  of  residence  for  so 
radical  a  revolutionist.  As  he  looked  across  the  city 
and  beheld  the  vast  monuments  raised  to  Amon  by  his 
fathers,  the  sight  could  hardly  have  stirred  pleasant 
memories  in  the  heart  of  the  young  reformer.  A 
doubtless  long  contemplated  plan  was  therefore  under- 
taken. Aton,  the  god  of  the  empire,  should  possess 
exclusively  his  own  city  in  each  of  the  three  great 
divisions  of  the  empire:  Egypt,  Asia  and  Nubia,  and 
the  god's  Egyptian  city  should  be  made  the  royal  resi- 
dence. It  must  have  been  an  enterprise  requiring  some 
time,  but  the  three  cities  were  duly  founded.  The 


270 


THE  EMPIRE:    FIRST  PERIOD 


Aton-city  of  Nubia  was  located  on  the  west  side  of  the 
river  at  the  foot  of  the  third  cataract,  in  the  heart  of  the 
Egyptian  province  (Note  VI).  It  was  named  "  Gem- 
Aton"  after  the  Aton-temple  in  Thebes.  In  Syria  the 
Aton-city  is  unknown,  but  Ikhnaton  will  not  have  done 
less  for  Aton  there  than  his  fathers  had  done  for  Amon. 
In  the  sixth  year,  shortly  after  he  had  changed  his  name, 
the  king  was  already  living  in  his  own  Aton-city  in 
Egypt.  He  chose  as  its  site  a  fine  bay  in  the  cliffs  about 
one  hundred  and  sixty  miles  above  the  Delta  and 
nearly  three  hundred  miles  below  Thebes.  He  called 
it  Akhetaton,  Horizon  of  Aton,"  and  it  is  known  in 
modern  times  as  Tell  el-Amarna.  In  addition  to  the 
town,  the  territory  around  it  was  demarked  as  a  domain 
belonging  to  the  god,  and  included  the  plain  on  both 
sides  of  the  river.  In  the  cliffs  on  either  side,  fourteen 
large  stelas,  one  of  them  no  less  than  twenty-six  feet  in 
height,  were  cut  into  the  rock,  bearing  inscriptions 
determining  the  limits  of  the  entire  sacred  district  around 
the  city.  As  thus  laid  out  the  district  was  about  eight 
miles  wide  from  north  to  south,  and  from  twelve  to  over 
seventeen  miles  long  from  cliff  to  cliff.  Besides  this 
sacred  domain  the  god  was  endowed  with  revenues  from 
other  lands  in  Egypt  and  Nubia,  and  probably  also  in 
Syria.  The  royal  architect,  Bek,  was  sent  to  the  first 
cataract  to  procure  stone  for  the  new  temple,  or  we 
should  rather  say  temples,  for  no  less  than  three  were 
now  built  in  the  new  city,  one  for  the  queen  mother,  Tiy, 
and  another  for  the  Princess  Beketaton  ("Maid- 
servant of  Aton"),  beside  the  state  temple  of  the  king 
himself.  Around  the  temples  rose  the  palace  of  the 
king  and  the  chateaus  of  his  nobles.  Many  a  scene  of 
splendour  is  now  discernible  in  the  beautiful  city,  as 
when  the  king  publicly  demits  the  office  of  High  Priest 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTIOX  OF  IIvHNATON  271 


of  Aton  and  confers  it  with  rich  gifts  upon  Merire,  one 
of  the  royal  favourites.  Again  we  behold  the  king  pro- 
ceeding to  the  temple  in  his  chariot,  accompanied  by 
his  four  daughters  and  a  gorgeous  retinue,  while  he  re- 
ceives there  the  first  dues  from  its  revenues  (BAR,  II, 
949-972;  973  if.\  1016-1018;  1000;  982;  M,  40,  106  Jf.). 

267.  It  becomes  more  and  more  evident  that  all  that 
v>'as  devised  and  done  in  the  new  city  and  in  the  propa- 
gation of  the  Aton  faith  is  directly  due  to  the  king  and 
bears  the  stamp  of  his  individuality.  A  king  who  was 
deliberately  attempting  the  annihilation  of  the  gods — 
one  who  did  not  hesitate  to  erase  his  own  father's  name 
on  the  monuments  in  order  to  destroy  Amon,  the  great 
foe  of  his  revolutionary  movement,  was  not  one  to 
stop  half  way,  and  the  men  about  him  must  have  been 
involuntarily  carried  on  at  his  imperious  will.  But 
Ikhnaton  understood  enough  of  the  old  policy  of  the 
Pharaohs  to  know  that  he  must  hold  his  party  by 
practical  rewards,  and  the  leading  partisans  of  his 
movement,  like  Merire,  enjoyed  liberal  bounty  at  his 
hands.  The  reason  which  they  give,  as  they  boast 
of  his  favour,  is  significant.  Thus  the  general  of  the 
king's  army,  Mai,  says:  "My  lord  has  advanced  me 
because  I  have  carried  out  his  teaching,  and  I  hear  his 

word  without  ceasing  How^  prosperous  is  he 

who  hears  thy  teaching  of  life!"  On  state  occasions, 
instead  of  the  old  stock  phrases,  w4th  innumerable 
references  to  the  traditional  gods  (which  it  must  have 
been  very  aw^kward  for  them  to  cease  using),  ever}^  noble 
who  would  enjoy  the  king's  favour  was  evidently 
obliged  to  show  his  familiarity  with  the  Aton  faith  and 
the  king's  position  in  it  by  a  liberal  use  of  its  current 
phrases  and  allusions.  Even  the  Syrian  vassals  were 
wise  enough  to  make  their  dispatches  pleasant  reading 


272  THE  EMPIRE:    FIRST  PERIOD 


by  glossing  them  with  appropriate  recognition  of  the 
supremacy  of  the  sun-god.  Although  there  must  have 
been  a  nucleus  of  men  who  really  appreciated  the  ideal 
aspects  of  the  king's  teaching,  it  is  evident  that  many 
were  chiefly  influenced  by  "the  loaves  and  the  fishes" 
(B.\R,  II,  994,  11.  17  /.;  995, 11.  21  /.;  985;  987;  994, 
11.  16  /.;  1002  /.). 

268.  Indeed  there  was  one  royal  favour  which  must 
have  been  welcome  to  them  all  without  exception. 
This  was  the  beautiful  cliff-tomb  which  the  king  com- 
manded his  craftsmen  to  hew  out  of  the  eastern  cliffs 
for  each  one  of  his  favourites.  The  "eternal  house" 
was  no  longer  disfigured  with  hideous  demons  and 
grotesque  monsters  which  should  confront  the  dead  in 
the  future  life;  and  the  magic  paraphernalia  necessary 
to  meet  and  vanquish  the  dark  powers  of  the  nether 
world,  which  filled  the  tombs  of  the  old  order  at  Thebes, 
were  completely  banished.  The  tomb  now  became  a 
monument  to  the  deceased;  the  walls  of  its  chapel  bore 
fresh  and  natural  pictures  from  the  life  of  the  people  in 
Akhetaton,  particularly  the  incidents  in  the  official 
career  of  the  dead  man,  and  preferably  his  intercourse 
with  the  king.  Thus  the  city  of  Akhetaton  is  now 
better  known  to  us  from  its  cemetery  than  from  its 
ruins.  Throughout  these  tombs  the  nobles  take  delight 
in  reiterating,  both  in  relief  and  inscription,  the  intimate 
relation  between  Aton  and  the  king.  Over  and  over 
again  they  show  the  king  and  the  queen  together  stand- 
ing under  the  disk  of  Aton,  whose  rays,  terminating  in 
hands,  descend  and  embrace  the  royal  pair  (BAR,  II, 
996;  1012;  1000,  1.  5;  991,  1.  3;  1010,  1.  3;  AL,  149, 
6  jf.  and  often). 

269.  It  is  in  these  tombs  that  the  nobles  have  en- 
graved the  two  hymns  to  Aton  composed  by  the  king. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  IKHNATON  273 


Of  all  the  monuments  left  by  this  unparalleled  revolu- 
tion, these  hymns  are  by  far  the  most  remarkable;  and 
from  them  we  may  gather  an  intimation  of  the  doctrines 
which  the  speculative  young  Pharaoh  had  sacrificed  so 
much  to  disseminate.  The  titles  of  the  separate 
strophes  are  the  addition  of  the  present  author,  and  in 
the  translation  no  attempt  has  been  made  to  do  more 
than  to  furnish  an  accurate  rendering.  The  one 
hundred  and  fourth  Psalm  of  the  Hebrews  shows  a 
notable  similarity  to  our  hymn  both  in  the  thought  and 
the  sequence,  so  that  it  seems  desirable  to  place  the  most 
noticeably  parallel  passages  side  by  side. 

The  Splendour  of  Aton 

Thy  dawning  is  beautiful  in  the  horizon  of  heaven, 

O  Uving  Aton,  Beginning  of  hfe! 

When  thou  risest  in  the  eastern  horizon  of  heaven, 

Thou  fiUest  every  land  with  thy  beauty; 

For  thou  art  beautiful,  great,  glittering,  high  over  the  earth; 

Thy  rays,  they  encompass  the  lands,  even  all  thou  hast  made. 

Thou  art  Re,  and  thou  hast  carried  them  all  away  captive; 

Thou  bindest  them  by  thy  love. 

Though  thou  art  afar,  thy  rays  are  on  earth; 

Though  thou  art  on  high,  thy  footprints  are  the  day. 

Night 


When  thou  settest  in  the  west- 
ern horizon  of  heaven, 
The  world  is  in  darkness  like 

the  dead. 
They  sleep  in  their  chambers, 
Their  heads  are  wrapt  up, 
Their  nostrils   stopped,  and 

none  seeth  the  other. 
Stolen  are  all  their  things,  that 

are  under  their  heads, 
While  they  know  it  not. 
Every  lion  cometh  forth  from 

his  den, 
All  serpents,  they  sting. 
Darkness  reigns  (?), 
The  world  is  in  silence. 
He  that  made  them  has  gone 
to  rest  in  his  horizon. 


Thou  makest  darkness  and  it 

is  night, 
Wherein  all  the  beasts  of  the 

forest  do  creep  forth. 
The  young  lions  roar  after  their 

prey; 

They  seek  their  meat  from  God. 

(Psahn  104,  20-21.) 


274 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


Day  and  Man 


Bright  is  the  earth, 
When  thou  risest  in  the  hori- 
zon, 

When  thou  shinest  as  Aton  by 
day. 

The  darkness  is  banished, 
When  thou  sendest  forth  thy 
rays, 

The  Two  Lands  [Egypt]  are  in 
daily  festivity, 

Awake  and  standing  upon 
their  feet. 

For  thou  hast  raised  them  up. 

Their  limbs  bathed,  they  take 
their  clothing; 

Their  arms  uplifted  in  adora- 
tion to  thy  dawning. 

Then  in  all  the  world,  they  do 
their  work. 


The  sun  ariseth,  they  get  them 
away, 

And  lay  them  down  in  their 
dens. 

Man  goeth  forth  unto  his  work. 
And  to  his  labour  until  the 
evening. 

(Psalm  104,  22-23.) 


Day  and  the  Animals  and  Plants 

All  cattle  rest  upon  their  herbage, 

All  trees  and  plants  flourish. 

The  birds  flutter  in  their  marshes. 

Their  wings  uplifted  in  adoration  to  thee. 

All  the  sheep  dance  upon  their  feet, 

All  winged  things  fly, 

They  live  when  thou  hast  shone  upon  them. 
Day  and  the  Waters 


The  barques  sail  up-stream 

and  down-stream  alike. 
Every  highway  is  open  because 

thou  hast  dawned. 
The  fish  in  the  river  leap  up 

before  thee, 
And  thy  rays  are  in  the  midst 

of  the  great  sea. 


Yonder  is  the  sea,  great  and 
wide, 

WTierein  are  things  creeping  in- 
numerable 
Both  small  and  great  beasts. 
There  go  the  ships; 
There  is  leviathan,  whom  thou 
hast  formed  to  sport  with 
him. 

(Psahn  104,  25-26.) 

Creation  of  Man 


Thou  art  he  who  createst  the  man-child  in  woman, 
Who  makest  seed  in  man, 

Who  givest  life  to  the  son  in  the  body  of  his  mother, 
Wlio  soothest  him  that  he  may  not  weep, 
A  nurse  [even]  in  the  womb. 

Wlio  giveth  breath  to  animate  every  one  that  he  maketh. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  IKHNATON  275 


When  he  cometh  forth  from  the  body, 
.    .    .    on  the  day  of  his  birth, 
Thou  openest  his  mouth  in  speech, 
Thou  auppHest  his  necessities. 

Creation  of  Animals 

When  the  chicklet  crieth  in  the  egg-shell, 

Thou  givest  him  breath  therein,  to  preserve  him  alive. 

When  thou  hast  perfected  him 

That  he  may  pierce  the  egg, 

He  cometh  forth  from  the  egg, 

To  chirp  with  all  his  might; 

He  runneth  about  upon  his  two  feet, 

When  he  hath  come  forth  therefrom. 

The  Whole  Creation 


O  lord,  how  manifold  are  thy 
works! 

In  wisdom  hast  thou  made 
them  all; 

The  earth  is  full  of  thy  creat- 
ures. 

(Psalm  104,  24.) 


How  manifold  are  all  thy 
works! 

They  are  hidden  from  before 
us, 

O  thou  sole  god,  whose  powers 
no  other  possesseth.* 

Thou  didst  create  the  earth  ac- 
cording to  thy  desire. 

While  thou  wast  alone: 

Men,  all  cattle  large  and  small, 

All  that  are  upon  the  earth. 

That  go  about  upon  their  feet; 

All  that  are  on  high. 

That  fly  with  their  wings. 

The  countries  of  Syria  and 
Nubia, 

The  land  of  Egypt; 

Thou  settest  every  man  in  his 
place. 

Thou  suppliest  their  necessities. 
Every  one  has  his  possessions. 
And  his  days  are  reckoned. 
Their  tongues  are  divers  in 
speech. 

Their  forms  likewise  and  their 
skins, 

For  thou  divider,  hast  divided 
the  peoples. 

Watering  the  Earth 

Thou  makest  the  Nile  in  the  Nether  World, 

Thou  bringest  it  at  thy  desire,  to  preserve  the  people  alive. 


*  The  other  hymns  frequently  say, 
is  no  other." 


O  thou  sole  god,  beside  whom  there 


276 


THE  EMPIRE:    FIRST  PERIOD 


O  lord  of  them  all,  when  feebleness  is  in  them, 
O  lord  of  every  house,  who  risest  for  them, 
O  sun  of  day,  the  fear  of  every  distant  land, 
Thou  makest  [also]  their  life. 
Thou  hast  set  a  Nile  in  heaven, 
That  it  may  fall  for  them. 

Making  flopds  upon  the  mountains,  like  the  great  sea; 
And  watering  their  fields  among  their  towns. 

How  excellent  are  thy  designs,  O  lord  of  eternity! 
The  Nile  in  heaven  is  for  the  strangers, 
And  for  the  cattle  of  every  land,  that  go  upon  their  feet; 
But  the  Nile,  it  cometh  from  the  Nether  World  for  Egypt. 

Thus  thy  rays  nourish  every  garden, 

When  thou  risest  they  live,  and  grow  by  thee. 

The  Seasons 

Thou  makest  the  seasons,  in  order  to  create  all  thy  works; 

Winter  bringing  them  coolness. 

And  the  heat  [of  summer  likewise]. 

Thou  hast  made  the  distant  heaven  to  rise  therein, 

In  order  to  behold  all  that  thou  didst  make, 

While  thou  wast  alone. 

Rising  in  thy  form  as  living  Aton, 

Dawning,  shining  afar  off  and  returning. 

Beauty  Due  to  Light 

Thou  makest  the  beauty  of  form,  through  thyself  alone. 

Cities,  towns  and  settlements. 

On  highway  or  on  river, 

All  eyes  see  thee  before  them. 

For  thou  art  Aton  of  the  day  over  the  earth. 

Revelation  to  the  King 

Thou  art  in  my  heart. 

There  is  no  other  that  knoweth  thee, 

Save  thy  son  Ikhnaton. 

Thou  hast  made  him  wise  in  thy  designs 

And  in  thy  might. 

The  world  is  in  thy  hand, 

Even  as  thou  hast  made  them. 

When  thou  hast  risen,  they  live; 

When  thou  settest,  they  die. 

For  thou  art  duration,  beyond  thy  mere  limbs, 

By  thee  man  liveth. 

And  their  eyes  look  upon  thy  beauty, 

Until  thou  settest. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  IKHNATON  277 


All  labour  is  laid  aside, 

When  thou  settest  in  the  west; 

When  thou  risest,  they  are  made  to  grow 

 for  the  king. 

Since  thou  didst  estabhsh  the  earth, 
Thou  hast  raised  them  up  for  thy  son, 
Who  came  forth  from  thy  limbs, 
The  king,  hving  in  truth, 

The  lord  of  the    wo  Lands  Xefer-khepru-Re,  Wan-Re, 

The  son  of  Re,  ii\ing  in  truth,  lord  of  diadems, 

Ikhnaton.  whose  life  is  long; 

[And  for]  the  great  royal  wife,  his  beloved, 

Mistress  of  the  Two  Lands,  Xefer-nefru-aton,  Nofretete, 

Living  and  flourishing  for  ever  and  ever. 


270.  In  this  hvmn  the  universaHsm  of  the  Empire  finds 
full  expression,  and  the  royal  singer  sweeps  his  eye  from 
the  far-off  cataracts  of  the  Nubian  Nile  to  the  remotest 
lands  of  Syria.  He  grasped  the  idea  of  a  world- 
dominator,  as  the  creator  of  nature,  in  which  the  king 
saw  revealed  the  creator's  beneficent  purpose  for  all  his 
creatures,  even  the  meanest;  the  birds  fluttering  about 
in  the  lily-grov^Ti  Nile-marshes  to  him  seemed  to  be  up- 
lifting their  wings  in  adoration  of  their  creator;  and  even 
the  fish  in  the  stream  leaped  up  in  praise  to  God.  It  is 
his  voice  that  summons  the  blossoms  and  nourishes  the 
chicklet  or  commands  the  mighty  deluge  of  the  Nile. 
He  called  Aton,  "  the  father  and  the  mother  of  all  that 
he  had  made,"  and  he  saw  in  some  degree  the  goodness 
of  that  All-Father  as  did  he  who  bade  us  consider  the 
lilies.  He  perceived  the  universal  sway  of  God  in  his 
fatherly  care  of  all  men  alike,  irrespective  of  race  or 
nationality,  and  to  the  proud  and  exclusive  Eg\^tian  he 
pointed  to  the  all-embracing  bounty  of  the  common 
father  of  humanity,  even  placing  Syria  and  Nubia 
before  Eg^'pt  in  his  enumeration.  It  is  this  aspect  of 
fkhnaton's  mind  which  is  especially  remarkable;  he  is 
alike  the  first  propliet  and  the  first  wise-man  of  history. 


278 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


271.  While  Ikhnaton  thus  recognized  clearly  the 
power,  and  to  a  surprising  extent,  the  beneficence  of 
God,  there  is  not  here  a  very  spiritual  conception  of  the 
deity  nor  any  attribution  to  him  of  ethical  qualities  be- 
yond those  already  long  attributed  to  the  gods.  Never- 
theless, there  is  in  fhis  "teaching,''  a  constant  emphasis 
upon  ''truth"  such  as  is  not  found  before  nor  since. 
The  king  alway  ^  attaches  to  his  name  the  phrase  "  liv- 
ing in  truth,"  and  that  this  phrase  was  not  meaning- 
less is  evidei  <t  in  his  daily  life.  Thus  his  family  life  was 
open  and  unconcealed  before  the  people.  He  took  the 
greatest  delight  in  his  children  and  appeared  with  then: 
and  the  queen,  their  mother,  on  all  possible  occasions, 
as  if  he  had  been  but  the  humblest  scribe  in  the  Aton- 
temple.  He  had  himself  depicted  on  the  monuments 
while  enjoying  the  most  familiar  and  unaffected  inter- 
course with  his  family,  and  whenever  he  appeared  in 
the  temple  to  offer  sacrifice,  the  queen  and  the  daughters 
she  had  borne  him  participated  in  the  service.  All  that 
was  natural  was  to  him  "true,"  and  he  never  failed 
practically  to  exemplify  this  belief,  however  radically  he 
was  obliged  to  disregard  tradition. 

272.  Such  a  principle  unavoidably  affected  the  art  of 
the  time  in  which  the  king  took  great  interest.  Bek, 
his  chief  sculptor,  appended  to  his  title  the  words, 
"whom  his  majesty  himself  taught."  Thus  the  artists 
of  his  court  were  taught  to  make  the  chisel  and  the  brush 
tell  the  story  of  what  they  actually  saw.  The  result  was 
a  simple  and  beautiful  realism  that  saw  more  clearly 
than  ever  any  art  had  seen  before.  They  caught  the 
instantaneous  postures  of  animal  life;  the  coursing 
hound,  the  fleeing  game,  the  wild  bull  leaping  in  the 
swamp;  for  all  these  belonged  to  the  "truth,"  in  which 
Ikhnaton  lived.    The  king's  person,  as  we  have  inti- 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  IKHNATON  279 


mated,  was  no  exception  to  the  law  of  the  new  art,  and 
the  monuments  of  Egypt  now  bore  what  they  had  never 
borne  before,  a  Pharaoh  not  frozen  in  the  conventional 
posture  demanded  by  the  traditions  of  court  propriety, 
but  as  he  actually  was.  There  are  now^  portraits  of 
the  king  that  might  have  been  done  by  a  Donatella. 
The  modelling  of  the  human  figure  at  this  time  was  so 
plastic  that  at  the  first  glance  one  is  sometimes  in  doubt 
whether  he  has  before  him  a  product  of  the  Greek  age. 
More  than  this,  complex  compositions  of  grouped  fig- 
ures in  the  round  were  now  first  conceived.  Fragments 
recently  discovered  show  that  in  the  court  of  the  king's 
palace  at  xAJdietaton  there  stood  a  group  ^Tought  in 
stone  depicting  the  king  in  his  chariot  in  full  career, 
pursuing  the  wounded  Hon.  This  was  indeed  a  new 
chapter  in  the  history  of  art,  even  though  so  soon  to 
perish.  It  was  in  some  things  an  obscure  chapter;  for 
the  strange  treatment  of  the  lower  limbs  by  Iklmaton's 
artists  is  a  problem  which  still  remains  unsolved  and 
cannot  be  wholly  accounted  for  by  supposing  a  malfor- 
mation of  the  king's  own  limbs.  It  is  one  of  those 
unhealthy  symptoms  which  are  visible  too  in  the  body 
politic,  and  to  these  last  we  must  now  turn  if  we  would 
learn  how  fatal  to  the  material  interests  of  the  state 
this  violent  break  with  tradition  has  been  (BAR,  II, 
975). 


XIX 


THE  FALL  OF  IKHNATON,  AND  THE  DISSOLUTION  OF 
THE  EMPIRE 

273.  Wholly  absorbed  in  the  exalted  religion  to 
which  he  had  given  his  life,  with  difficulty  stemming  the 
tide  of  tradition  that  was  daily  as  strong  against  him  as 
at  first,  Ikhnaton  was  beset  with  too  many  problems 
at  home  to  give  much  attention  to  the  affairs  of  the 
Empire  abroad.  On  his  accession  his  sovereignty  in 
Asia  had  immediately  been  recognized  by  the  Hittites 
and  the  powers  of  the  Euphrates  valley.  Dushratta  of 
Mitanni  and  Burraburyash  of  Babylon  sent  assurances 
of  sympathy  on  Amenhotep  IIFs  death,  and  both 
sought  the  favour  of  the  new  Pharaoh.  A  son  of  Burra- 
buryash later  sojourned  at  Ikhnaton 's  court  and  mar- 
ried a  daughter  of  the  latter.  But  such  intercourse  did 
not  last  long,  as  we  shall  see  (AL,  22;  21;  14;  8,  41  ) 

274.  Meantime  the  power  of  the  Hittites  in  northern 
Syria  was  ever  increasing,  constantly  reinforced  by  the 
southern  movement  of  their  countrymen  behind  them. 
The  remains  of  this  remarkable  race,  one  of  the  great- 
est problems  in  the  study  of  the  early  Orient,  have  been 
found  from  the  western  coast  of  Asia  Minor  eastward 
to  the  plains  of  Syria  and  the  Euphrates,  and  south- 
ward as  far  as  Hamath.  They  were  a  non-Semitic 
people,  or  rather  peoples,  of  uncertain  racial  affinities, 
but  evidently  distinct  from,  and  preceding,  the  Indo- 

280 


THE  DISSOLUTIOX  OF  THE  EMPIRE  281 


Germanic  influx  after  1200  b.  c.  which  brought  in  the 
Phrygians.  The  Hittite  pictographic  records  are  still 
in  course  of  decipherment,  and  enough  progress  has 
not  yet  been  made  to  enable  the  scholar  to  do  more 
than  recognize  a  word  here  and  there.  For  corres- 
pondence they  employed  the  Babylonian  cuneiform, 
and  therefore  maintained  scribes  and  interpreters  who 
were  masters  of  Babylonian  speech  and  TVTiting.  Large 
quantities  of  cuneiform  tablets  in  the  Hittite  tongue 
have  been  found  at  Boghaz-koi.  In  war  they  were 
formidable  opponents.  The  infantry,  among  which 
foreign  mercenaries  were  plentiful,  fought  in  close 
phalanx  formation,  very  effective  at  close  quarters; 
but  their  chief  f>ower  consisted  of  heavy  chariotry. 
As  far  back  as  the  eighteenth  century  they  had  pushed 
eastward,  invaded  [Mesopotamia,  and  plundered  Baby- 
lon, probably  causing  the  fall  of  the  First  Dynasty  there 
(KSEH,  II,  72,  148).  One  of  the  Hittite  dynasts  had 
consolidated  a  kingdom  beyond  the  Amanus,  which 
Thutmose  III  regularly  called  "Great  Kheta,"  as 
probably  distinguished  from  the  less  important  inde- 
pendent Hittite  princes.  His  capital  was  a  great 
fortified  city  called  Khatti,  near  modern  Boghaz-koi, 
east  of  Angora  in  eastern  Asia  Minor  (Note  X).  Active 
trade  and  intercourse  between  this  kingdom  and  Egypt 
had  been  carried  on  from  that  time  or  began  not  long 
after.  "\Mien  Ikhnaton  ascended  the  throne  Seplel,  the 
king  of  the  Hittites,  ^Tote  him  a  letter  of  congratulation, 
and  to  all  appearances  had  only  the  friendliest  intentions 
toward  Egypt.  Even  after  Ikhnaton's  removal  to 
Akhetaton  his  new  capital,  a  Hittite  embassy  appeared 
there  with  gifts  and  greetings.  But  Ikhnaton  must  have 
regarded  the  old  relations  as  no  longer  desirable,  for  the 
Hittite  king  asks  him  why  he  has  ceased  the  correspond- 


282 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


ence  which  his  father  had  maintained.  If  he  realized 
the  situation,  Ikhnaton  had  good  reason  indeed  for 
abandoning  the  connection ;  for  the  Hittite  empire  now 
stood  on  the  northern  threshold  of  Syria,  the  most  for- 
midable enemy  which  had  ever  confronted  Egypt,  and 
the  greatest  power  in  Asia  (MAAG;  AL,  35;  25,  49  /.; 
BAR,  II,  981). 

275.  Immediately  on  Ikhnaton*s  accession  the  dis- 
affected dynasts  who  had  been  temporarily  suppressed 
by  his  father  resumed  their  operations  against  the  faithful 
vassals  of  Egypt.  The  Hittites  were  steadily  advancing 
up  the  Orontes,  with  the  cooperation  of  the  unfaithful 
Egyptian  vassals,  Abd-ashirta  and  his  son  Aziru,  who 
were  at  the  head  of  an  Amorite  kingdom  on  the  upper 
Orontes;  together  with  Itakama,  a  Syrian  prince,  who 
had  seized  Kadesh  as  his  kingdom.  Aziru  of  Amor 
finally  succeeded  in  capturing  all  the  Phoenician  and 
north  Syrian  coast  cities  except  Simyra  and  Byblos 
which  held  out.  Then,  as  the  Hittites  pushed  up  the 
Orontes,  Aziru  cooperated  with  them  and  captured  Niy, 
whose  king  he  slew.  Tunip  was  now  in  such  grave 
danger  that  her  elders  wrote  the  Pharaoh  a  pathetic 
letter  beseeching  his  protection.  They  ask:  ''Who 
formerly  could  have  plundered  Tunip  without  being 
plundered  by  Manakhbiria  [Thutmose  III]?"  and 
they  conclude  with  lamentation:  "And  when  Aziru 
enters  Simyra,  Aziru  will  do  to  us  as  he  pleases,  in  the 
territory  of  our  lord,  the  king,  and  on  account  of  these 
things  our  lord  will  have  to  lament.  And  now,  Tunip, 
thy  city  weeps,  and  her  tears  are  flowing,  and  there  is  no 
help  for  us.  For  twenty  years  we  have  been  sending  to 
our  lord,  the  king,  the  king  of  Egypt,  but  there  has  not 
come  to  us  a  word,  no  not  one'*  (AL,  88;  119;  125; 
131-133;  123;  86;  119;  120;  41). 


THE  DISSOLUTION  OF  THE  EMPIRE  2S3 


276.  During  all  this,  Rib-Addi,  a  faithful  vassal  of 
Byblos,  where  there  was  an  Egyptian  temple,  repeatedly 
writes  to  the  Pharaoh  the  most  urgent  appeals,  stating 
what  is  going  on,  and  asking  for  help  to  drive 
away  Aziru's  people  from  Sim}Ta,  knowing  full  well 
that  if  it  falls  his  o-^ti  city  of  Byblos  is  likeT\4se 
doomed.  But  no  help  comes.  Several  Eg^'ptian  dep- 
uties had  been  charged  with  the  investigation  of 
affairs  at  Simyra,  but  they  did  not  succeed  in  doing 
an}1;hing,  and  the  city  finally  fell.  Aziru  had  no 
hesitation  in  slaying  the  Egyptian  deputy  resident 
in  the  place,  and  having  destroyed  it,  was  now 
free  to  move  against  Byblos.  Rib-Addi  WTote  in  horror 
of  these  facts  to  the  Pharaoh,  stating  that  the  Egyptian 
deputy,  resident  in  Kumidi  in  northern  Palestine,  was 
now  in  danger.  But  the  wily  Aziru,  skilful  in  specious 
excuses,  so  uses  his  friends  at  court  that  he  escapes. 
Ikhnaton  is  reassured  by  Aziru's  promises  to  pay  the 
same  tribute  as  the  cities  which  he  has  taken  formerly 
paid.  Such  acknowledgment  of  Egyptian  suzerainty 
by  the  turbulent  dynasts  everywhere  must  have  left  in 
the  Pharaoh  a  feeling  of  security  which  the  situation  by 
no  means  justified  ((AL,  150/.;  85;  119;  120;  94;  44- 
47;  49,  36-40;  50  /.). 

277.  During  all  this  time  Rib-Addi  is  in  sore  straits 
in  Byblos,  and  sends  dispatch  after  dispatch  to  the 
Egyptian  court,  appealing  for  aid  against  Aziru.  The 
claims  of  the  hostile  dynasts,  however,  are  so  skilfully 
made  that  the  resident  Egyptian  deputies  actually  do 
not  seem  to  know  who  are  the  faithful  vassals  and  who 
the  secretly  rebellious.  Thus  Bikhuru,  the  Egyptian 
deputy  in  Galilee,  not  understanding  the  situation  in 
Byblos,  sent  his  Beduin  mercenaries  thither,  where  they 
s^evv^  all  of  Rib-Addi's  Sherden  garrison.  The  unhappy 


284 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


Rib-Addi,  now  at  the  mercy  of  his  foes,  sent  off  two 
dispatches  beseeching  the  Pharaoh  to  take  notice  of  his 
pitiful  phght;  while,  to  make  matters  worse,  the  city 
raised  an  insurrection  against  him  because  of  the  w^anton 
act  of  the  Egyptian  resident.  He  has  now  sustained  the 
siege  for  three  years,  he  is  did  and  burdened  with  disease; 
fleeing  to  Berut  to  secure  help  from  the  Eg^^ptian  deputy 
there,  he  returns  to  Byblos  to  find  the  city  closed  against 
him,  his  brother  having  seized  the  government  in  his 
absence  and  delivered  his  children  to  Aziru.  As  Berut 
itself  is  soon  attacked  and  falls,  he  forsakes  it,  again 
returns  to  Byblos  and  in  some  way  regains  control  and 
holds  the  place  for  a  while  longer.  Although  Aziru,  his 
enemy,  was  obliged  to  appear  at  court  and  finally  did 
so,  no  relief  came  for  the  despairing  Rib-Addi.  All  the 
cities  of  the  coast  were  held  by  his  enemies  and  their 
ships  commanded  the  sea,  so  that  provisions  and  rein- 
forcements could  not  reach  him.  His  w^ife  and  family 
urge  him  to  abandon  Egypt  and  join  Aziru's  party,  but 
still  he  is  faithful  to  the  Pharaoh  and  asks  for  three 
hundred  men  to  undertake  the  recovery  of  Berut,  and 
thus  gain  a  little  room.  The  Hittites  are  plundering 
his  territory  and  the  Khabiri,  or  Beduin  mercenaries 
of  his  enemy  Aziru,  swarm  under  his  walls;  his  dis- 
patches to  the  court  soon  cease,  his  city  of  course  fell, 
he  was  probably  slain  like  the  kings  of  the  other  coast 
cities,  and  in  him  the  last  vassal  of  Egypt  in  the  north 
had  perished  (AL,  51;  77;  100;  71;  23;  96;  65;  67; 
104;  68;  102;  104). 

278.  Similar  conditions  prevailed  in  the  south,  where 
the  advance  of  the  Khabiri,  among  whom  we  must 
recognize  bands  of  Hebrews  and  Aramaeans,  was  stead- 
ily absorbing  Palestine.  Knots  of  their  warriors  are  now 
appearing  everywhere  and  taking  sen^ice  as  mercenary 


THE  DISSOLUTION  OF  THE  EMPIRE  285 


troops  under  the  dynasts  on  both  sides.  Under  various 
adventurers  the  Khabiri  are  frequently  the  real  masters, 
and  Palestinian  cities  like  Megiddo,  Askalon  and  Gezer 
write  to  the  Pharaoh  for  succour  against  them.  The  last 
named  city,  together  with  Askalon  and  Lachish,  united 
against  Abdkhiba,  the  Egyptian  deputy  in  Jerusalem, 
already  at  this  time  an  important  stronghold  of  southern 
Palestine,  and  the  faithful  officer  sends  urgent  dispatches 
to  Iklinaton  explaining  the  danger  and  appealing  for 
aid  against  the  Khabiri  and  their  leaders.  Fleeing  in 
terror  before  the  Khabiri,  who  burned  and  laid  waste 
everv'where,  many  of  the  Palestinians  forsook  their 
towns  and  took  to  the  hills,  or  sought  refuge  in  Eg}^pt, 
where  the  Eg^'ptian  officer  in  charge  of  some  of  them 
said  of  them:  "They  have  been  destroyed  and  their 
town  laid  waste,  and  fire  has  been  thro-^m  [into  their 
grain  ?]....  Their  countries  are  starving,  they  live 
like  goats  of  the  mountain.  ...  A  few  of  the  Asiatics, 
who  knew  not  how  they  should  live,  have  come  [begging 
a  home  in  the  domain  ?]  of  Pharaoh,  after  the  manner 
of  your  father's  fathers  since  the  beginning."  The 
last  tribute  from  Asia,  of  which  we  are  informed,  was 
received  at  Akhetaton  in  the  twelfth  year.  Some  time 
thereafter,  both  in  Syria  and  Palestine  the  provinces  of 
the  Pharaoh  passed  entirely  out  of  Egyptian  control 
(AL,  102;  104;  146;  179-185;  180,  55  /,;  94;  182; 
97;  11;  BAR,  III,  11;  11,1014/.). 

279.  Ikhnaton's  faithful  vassals  had  showered  dis- 
patches upon  him,  had  sent  special  ambassadors,  sons 
and  brothers  to  represent  to  him  the  seriousness  of  the 
situation ;  but  they  had  either  received  no  replies  at  all, 
or  an  Egyptian  commander  with  an  entirely  inadequate 
force  was  dispatched  to  make  futile  and  desultory  at- 
tempts to  deal  with  a  situation  which  demanded  the 


286 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


Pharaoh  himself  and  the  whole  available  army  of  Egypt. 
At  Akhetaton,  the  new  and  beautiful  capital,  the  splendid 
temple  of  Aton  resounded  with  hymns  to  the  new  god 
of  the  Empire,  while  the  Empire  itself  was  no  more. 
The  habit  of  generations  and  fast  vanishing  appre- 
hension lest  the  Pharaoh  might  appear  in  Syria  with  his 
army,  still  prompted  a  few  sporadic  letters  from  the 
dynasts,  assuring  him  of  their  loyalty,  which  perhaps 
continued  in  the  mind  of  Ikhnaton  the  illusion  that  he 
was  still  lord  of  Asia. 

280.  The  storm  which  had  broken  over  his  Asiatic 
empire  was  not  more  disastrous  than  that  which  threat- 
ened the  fortunes  of  his  house  in  Eg}'pt.  But  he  was  as 
steadfast  as  before  in  the  propagation  of  his  new  faith. 
At  his  command  temples  of  Aton  had  now  risen  all  over 
the  land.  He  devoted  himself  to  the  elaboration  of  the 
temple  ritual  and  the  tendency  to  theologize  somewhat 
dimmed  the  earlier  freshness  of  the  hymns  to  the  god. 
Meantime  the  suppression  of  the  most  cherished  beliefs 
of  the  people,  like  their  faith  in  Osiris,  their  old-time 
protector  and  friend  in  the  world  of  darkness,  was  pro- 
ducing a  national  convulsion.  The  people  could  under- 
stand nothing  of  the  refinements  involved  in  the  new 
faith,  and  in  the  course  of  such  attempted  changes  in 
the  customs  and  traditional  faith  of  a  whole  people, 
as  we  see  in  the  similar  attempt  of  Theodosius  eighteen 
hundred  years  later,  the  span  of  one  man's  life  is  in- 
significant indeed.  The  Aton-faith  remained  but  the 
cherished  theory  of  the  idealist,  Ikhnaton,  and  a  little 
circle  which  formed  his  court;  it  never  really  became 
the  religion  of  the  people  (BAR,  II,  1014-15;  1017-18; 
AZ,  40,  110-113). 

281.  Added  to  the  secret  resentment  and  opposition 
of  the  people,  we  must  consider  also  a  far  more  danger- 


THE  DISSOLUTION  OF  THE  EMPIRE  287 


©US  force,  the  hatred  of  the  old  priesthoods,  particularly 
that  of  Amon.  The  neglect  and  loss  of  the  Asiatic 
empire  must  have  turned  against  the  king  many  a  strong 
man,  and  aroused  indignation  in  the  hearts  of  the 
military  class,  whose  grandfathers  had  served  under 
Thutmose  III.  One  such  man,  an  officer  named 
Harmhab,  now  in  the  service  of  Ikhnaton  and  enjoying 
the  royal  favour,  not  only  contrived  to  win  the  support 
of  the  military  class,  but  also  gained  the  favour  of  the 
priests  of  Amon,  who  were  of  course  looking  for  some 
one  who  could  bring  them  the  opportunity  they  coveted. 
Thus  both  the  people  and  the  priestly  and  military 
classes,  alike,  were  fomenting  plans  to  overthrow  the 
hated  dreamer  in  the  palace  of  the  Pharaohs,  of  whose 
thoughts  they  understood  so  little.  To  increase  his 
danger,  fortune  had  decreed  him  no  son,  and  he  was 
obliged  to  depend  for  support  as  the  years  passed,  upon 
his  son-in-law  a  noble  named  Sakere,  who  had  married 
his  eldest  daughter,  Meritaton,  Beloved  of  Aton." 
Ikhnaton  had  probably  never  been  physically  strong; 
his  spare  face,  with  the  lines  of  an  ascetic,  shows  in- 
creasing traces  of  the  cares  which  weighed  so  heavily 
upon  him.  He  finally  nominated  Sakere  as  his  successor 
and  appointed  him  at  the  same  time  coregent.  He 
survived  but  a  short  time  after  this,  and  about  1358  b.  c, 
having  reigned  some  seventeen  years  he  succumbed  to 
the  overwhelming  forces  that  were  against  him.  In  a 
lonely  valley  some  miles  to  the  east  of  his  city  he  was 
buried  in  a  tomb  which  he  had  excavated  in  the  rock 
for  himself  and  family,  and  where  his  second  daughter, 
Maketaton,  already  rested  (BAR,  III,  22  jj.). 

282.  Thus  disappeared  the  most  remarkable  figure  in 
earlier  oriental  history;  or  indeed  in  the  history  of  the 
world  before  the  Hebrews.    To  his  own  nation  he  was 


288 


THE  EMPIRE:  FIRST  PERIOD 


afterward  known  as  "the  criminal  of  Akhetaton;"  but, 
however  much  we  may  censure  him,  we  see  in  him  at  the 
same  time  such  a  spirit  as  the  early  world  had  never 
known  before.  Among  the  Hebrews,  seven  to  eight 
hundred  years  later,  we  look  for  such  men;  but  the 
modern  world  has  yet  adequately  to  value  or  even  ac- 
quaint itself  with  this  man,  who  in  an  age  so  remote  and 
under  conditions  so  adverse,  became  the  world^s  first 
idealist  and  the  world's  first  individiLol. 

283.  Sakere  quickly  disappeared,  to  be  followed  by 
Tutenkhaton  (''Living  image  of  Aton"),  another  son- 
in-law  of  Ikhnaton,  who  was  soon  forced  by  the  priests  of 
Amon  to  forsake  Akhetaton  and  reside  at  Thebes 
which  had  not  seen  a  Pharaoh  for  twenty  years.  The 
Aton-temples  fell  a  prey  to  the  vengeance  of  the  Theban 
party,  and  the  once  beautiful  city  of  Aton  was  gradually 
transformed  into  a  desolate  ruin.  Here  in  a  low  brick 
room,  which  had  senxd  as  an  archive-chamber  for 
Ikhnaton's  foreign  office,  were  found  in  1885  some 
three  hundred  letters  and  dispatches,  the  Tell  el- 
Amarna  letters,  in  which  we  have  traced  his  intercourse 
and  dealings  with  the  kings  and  rulers  of  Asia  and  the 
gradual  disintegration  of  his  empire  there.  Here  were 
the  more  than  sixty  dispatches  of  the  unfortunate  Rib- 
Addi  of  Byblos.  All  the  other  Aton-cities  likewise 
perished  utterly;  but  Gem- Aton,  safe  from  the  first 
burst  of  WTath  in  far-off  Nubia,  survived  for  a  thou- 
sand years,  and — strange  irony! — there  was  afterward  a 
temple  there  to  "Amon,  lord  of  Gem-Aton!"  (AZ,  40, 
106-108). 

284.  On  reaching  Thebes,  Tutenkhaton  continued 
the  worship  of  Aton,  but  Amon  slowly  regained  his  own, 
till  the  king  was  obliged  even  to  change  his  name  to 
Tutenkhamon,  "Living  image  of  Amon,"  showing  that 


THE  DISSOLUTION  OF  THE  EMPIRE  289 


he  was  now  completely  in  the  hands  of  the  priestly 
partv.  The  empire  which  he  ruled  was  still  no  mean 
one,  extending  as  it  did  from  the  Delta  through  Nubia 
to  the  fourth  cataract,  and  even  still  enjoying  an  occa- 
sional installment  of  traditional  tribute  from  Palestine. 
Tutenkhaton  was  quickly  succeeded  by  Eye,  another  of 
the  worthies  of  the  Akhetaton  court,  who  had  married 
Ikhnaton's  nurse,  Tiy.  He  was  sufficiently  imbued 
with  Ikhnaton's  ideas  feebly  to  strive  for  a  short  time 
against  the  priests  of  Amon ;  but  ere  long  he  too  passed 
away  and  it  would  appear  that  one  or  two  other  ephem- 
eral pretenders  gained  the  ascendancy  either  now  or 
before  his  accession.  Anarchy  ensued.  Thebes  was  a 
prey  of  plundering  bands,  who  forced  their  way  into  the 
royal  tombs  and  robbed  the  tomb  of  Thutmose  IV. 
The  prestige  of  the  old  Theban  line  which  had  been 
dominant  for  two  hundred  and  fifty  years ;  the  illustrious 
family  which  two  hundred  and  thirty  years  before  had 
cast  out  the  Hyksos  and  built  the  greatest  empire  the 
east  had  ever  seen,  was  now  totally  eclipsed  (1350  b.  c). 
Manetho  places  Harmhab,  the  restorer  who  now  gained 
the  throne,  at  the  close  of  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty;  but 
in  so  far  as  we  know  he  was  not  of  royal  blood  nor  any 
kin  of  the  now  fallen  house.  He  marks  the  complete 
restoration  of  Amon,  the  resumption  of  the  old  order  and 
the  beginning  of  a  new  epoch  (AZ,  34,  135;  BAR,  II, 
896;  1019;  1034  ff.;  1027  ff.;  Ill,  20,  11.  2,  5,  8;  32 
A^.). 


PART  VI 

THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


XX 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  AMON  AND  THE  REORGANIZATION 

OF  THE  EMPIRE 

285.  The  officer  Harmhab,  whom  we  have  already 
noticed  in  the  service  of  Ikhnaton,  was  an  able  organizer 
and  skilful  man  of  affairs  quite  after  the  manner  of 
Thutmose  III.  He  belonged  to  an  old  family  once 
nomarchs  of  Alabastronpolis ;  he  had  successfully  exe- 
cuted imjK)rtant  royal  commissions  and  had  served  with 
distinction  in  Asia.  During  the  precarious  times  inci- 
dent to  the  rapid  succession  of  weak  kings  following 
Ikhnaton's  death  he  had  skilfully  maintained  himself 
and  gradually  gained  a  position  of  such  influence,  that 
he  was  now  the  real  power  of  the  throne.  This  con- 
tinued for  some  years,  until  1350  B.  c,  and  the  next  step 
was  but  to  receive  the  titles  and  insignia  of  royalty. 
With  the  army  behind  him  and  the  support  of  the 
priesthood  of  Amon  at  Thebes,  it  was  only  necessary 
to  proceed  thither  to  be  recognized  by  Amon  as  the 
ruling  Pharaoh.  This  was  done,  amid  great  splendour 
at  the  feast  of  Opet.  Harmhab  at  the  same  time  con- 
tracted a  purely  formal  marriage  with  one  of  the 
princesses  of  the  old  line,  to  secure  the  semblance  of 
legitimacy,  and  the  new  reign  then  began  (BAR,  III, 
5-13;  25-30). 

286.  The  energy  which  had  brought  Harmhab  his 
exalted  office  was  immediately  evident  in  his  administra- 

293 


294 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


tion  of  it.    He  was  untiring  in  restoring  to  the  land  the 
orderly  organization  which  it  had  once  enjoyed.    At  the 
same  time  he  did  not  forget  the  temples,  which  had  been 
so  long  closed  under  the  Aton  regime.     He  restored 
the  temples  from  the  pools  of  the  Delta  marshes  to 
Nubia.    He  shaped  all  their  images  in  number  more 
than  before.    The  priesthoods  were  everywhere  re- 
stored, Amon  received  again  his  old  endowments  and 
even  "gold-country"  of  his  own  in  Nubia,  while  the 
incomes  of  all  the  other  disinherited  temples  were  like- 
wise  restored.    The  people  resumed  in  public  the 
worship  of  the  innumerable  gods  which  they  had 
practised  in  secret  during  the  supremacy  of  Aton.  The 
sculptors  of  the  king  were  sent  throughout  the  land, 
reinserting  on  the  monuments  defaced  by  Ikhnaton,  the 
names  of  the  gods  which  he  had  erased.  Everywhere 
the  name  of  the  hated  Ikhnaton  was  treated  as  he  had 
those  of  the  gods.    At  Akhetaton  his  tomb  was  wrecked 
and  its  reliefs  chiselled  out;  while  the  tombs  of  his 
nobles  there  were  violated  in  the  same  way.  Every 
effort  was  made  to  annihilate  all  trace  of  the  reign  of 
?uch  a  man;  and  when  in  legal  procedure  it  was  neces- 
sary to  cite  documents  or  enactments  from  his  reign  he 
was  designated  as  "that  criminal  of  Akhetaton."  The 
triumph  of  Amon  was  complete;  the  priests  exulted  in 
the  overthrow  of  his  enemies:  "Woe  to  him  who  assails 
thee  !    Thy  city  endures  but  he  who  assails  thee  is 
overthrown.    Fie  upon  him  who  sins  against  thee  in 
any  land.  .  .  .  The  sun  of  him  who  knew  thee  not 
has  set,  but  he  who  knows  thee  shines.    The  sanctu- 
ary of  him  who  assailed  thee  is  overwhelmed  in  dark- 
ness, but  the  whole  earth  is  in  light"  (BAR,  HI,  22-32; 
71  /.;  II,  p.  383,  notes  a,  b;  BTLN,  p.  20;  AZ,  42, 
106-109;  GIM). 


THE  REORGANIZATION  OF  THE  EMPIRE  295 


287.  There  were  other  directions  in  which  the  restora- 
tion of  what  Harmhab  regarded  as  normal  conditions 
was  not  merely  yielding  to  the  inertia  of  tradition. 
Gross  laxity  in  the  oversight  of  the  local  administration 
had  characterized  the  reign  of  Ikhnaton  and  his  succes- 
sors. Everywhere  the  local  officials,  long  secure  from 
close  inspection  on  the  part  of  the  central  government, 
had  revelled  in  extortions,  practised  upon  the  long- 
suffering  masses.  To  ameliorate  these  conditions 
Harmhab  first  informed  himself  thoroughly  as  to  the 
extent  and  character  of  the  evils,  and  then  in  his  private 
chamber  he  dictated  to  his  personal  scribe  a  remarkable 
series  of  special  and  highly  particularized  laws  to  suit 
every  case  of  which  he  had  learned.  The  penalties 
were  severe.  A  tax-collector  for  example,  if  found 
guilty  of  thus  practising  upon  the  poor  man,  was 
sentenced  to  have  his  nose  cut  off,  followed  by  banish- 
ment to  Tharu,  the  desolate  frontier  city  far  out  in  the 
sands  of  the  Arabian  desert  toward  Asia.  The  dis- 
covery of  such  local  misgovernment  was  very  difficult 
owing  to  collusion  with  the  local  officials  by  inspecting 
officers  sent  out  by  the  central  government.  These 
corrupt  superiors,  for  a  share  in  the  plunder,  would 
overlook  the  extortions  which  they  had  been  sent  from 
the  court  to  discover  and  prevent.  This  evil,  rooted 
out  in  the  days  of  the  aggressive  Thutmose  III,  was 
now  rampant  again,  and  Harmhab  apparently  revived 
the  methods  of  Thutmose  HI  for  controlling  it.  In 
order  to  lift  his  executive  officials  above  all  necessity  of 
accepting  any  income  from  a  corrupt  source,  Harmhab 
had  them  provided  for  with  great  liberality.  They 
went  out  on  inspection  several  times  a  month,  and  on 
these  occasions  either  just  before  their  departure  or 
immediately  after  their  return,  the  king  gave  them  a 


296 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


sumptuous  feast  in  the  palace  court,  appearing  himself 
upon  the  balcony,  addressing  each  man  by  name  and 
throwing  down  gifts  among  them.  In  the  introduction 
and  application  of  the  new  laws  Harmhab  went  person- 
ally from  end  to  end  of  the  kingdom,  improving  also  the 
administration  of  justice.  Besides  the  appointment  of 
good  viziers  and  stringent  laws  against  bribery,  in 
order  to  discourage  the  latter  among  the  local  judges,  he 
took  an  unprecedented  step.  He  remitted  the  tax  of 
gold  and  silver  levied  upon  judicial  officers,  permitting 
them  to  retain  the  entire  income  of  their  offices,  in  order 
that  they  might  have  no  excuse  for  illegally  enriching 
themselves.  These  sane  and  philanthropic  reforms 
give  Harmhab  a  high  place  in  the  history  of  humane 
government;  especially  when  we  remember  that  even 
since  the  occupation  of  the  country  by  the  English, 
the  evils  at  which  he  struck  have  been  found  exceed- 
ingly persistent  and  difficult  to  root  out  (BAR,  III, 
45-67). 

288.  If  Harmhab  had  any  ambition  to  leave  a  reputa- 
tion as  a  foreign  conqueror,  the  times  were  against  him. 
His  accession  fell  at  a  time  when  all  his  powers  and  all 
his  great  ability  were  necessarily  employed  exclusively 
in  reorganizing  the  kingdom.  He  probably  reached  an 
understanding  with  the  Hittites,  he  kept  Nubia  well  in 
hand,  and  he  sent  out  a  successful  expedition  to  Punt.  He 
performed  his  task  at  home  with  a  strength  and  skill  not 
less  than  were  required  for  great  conquest  abroad; 
and,  although  a  soldier,  with  all  the  qualities  which  that 
calling  implies  in  the  early  east,  he  could  truly  say: 
"Behold,  his  majesty  spent  the  whole  time  seeking  the 
welfare  of  Egypt."  He  probably  reigned  some  thirty- 
five  years,  and  was  buried  in  his  old  Memphite  tomb, 
erected  before  his  coronation  and  still  bearing  his  old 


THE  REORGAXIZATIOX  OF  THE  EMPIRE  297 


titles  (BAR,  III,  64-^7;  45  fj.-  34;  377;  40 yj^.;  37 yf.; 
50;  1-21;  157;  78;  74  j].-,  GIM). 

289.  The  fruits  of  Harmhab's  reorganization  were 
destined  to  be  enjoyed  by  his  successors.  Whether  or 
not  he  succeeded  in  founding  a  dynasty  we  do  not 
know.  It  is  impossible  to  discover  any  certain  connec- 
tion between  him  and  Ramses  I,  an  old  man,  who  now 
(1315  B.  c.)  succeeded  him.  Too  old  to  accomplish 
anything,  Ramses  I  was  after  a  short  coregency  followed 
by  his  son,  Seti  I,  then  probably  about  thirty  years  old 
(1313  B.  c).  During  his  short  coregency  of  not  more 
than  a  year,  Seti  I  must  have  already  laid  all  his  plans 
and  organized  his  army  in  readiness  for  an  attempt  to 
recover  the  lost  empire  in  Asia.  The  information  which 
Seti  I  now  received  as  to  the  state  of  Palestine  betrays 
a  condition  of  affairs  quite  such  as  we  should  expect 
would  have  resulted  from  the  tendency  evident  in  the 
letters  of  Abdkhiba  of  Jerusalem  to  Ikhnaton  (p.  285). 
They  showed  us  the  Beduin  of  the  neighbouring  desert 
pressing  into  Palestine  and  taking  possession  of  the 
towns,  whether  in  the  service  of  the  turbulent  dynasts 
or  on  their  own  responsibility.  We  saw  these  letters 
corroborated  by  Egyptian  monuments,  portraying  the 
panic-stricken  Palestinians  fleeing  into  Egypt  before 
these  foes.  Seti  I's  messengers  now  bring  him  informa- 
tion of  the  very  same  character  regarding  the  Beduin. 
It  was  among  these  desert  invaders  of  Palestine  that  the 
movement  of  the  Hebrews  resulting  in  their  settlement 
there  took  place  (BAR,  III,  157;  84;  86;  II,  409;  III, 
101,  11.  3-9). 

290.  In  his  first  year  Seti  was  able  to  march  out  from 
Tharu  and  lead  his  expedition  along  the  desert  road, 
past  the  stations  which  he  had  already  restored.  Hav- 
ing subdued  the  Beduin  of  southern  Palestine,  he  pushed 


298  THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


rapidly  northward,  capturing  the  towns  of  the  plain  of 
Esdrislon  (Jezreel),  pushing  eastward  across  the  valley 
of  the  Jordan  and  erecting  his  tablet  of  victory  in  the 
Hauran,  and  westward  to  the  southern  slopes  of  Leba- 
non, where  the  neighbouring  dynasts  immediately  came 
to  him  and  offered  their  allegiance.  They  had  not  seen 
a  Pharaoh  at  the  head  of  his  army  in  Asia  for  over  fifty 
years, — not  since  Amenhotep  III  had  left  Sidon  (See 
p.  263).  It  is  remotely  possible  that  he  advanced  as  far 
north  as  Simyra  and  Ullaza,  and  that  the  prince  of 
Cyprus  sent  in  his  gifts  as  of  old.  However  that  may 
be,  Tyre  and  Othu  submitted  in  any  case,  and  having 
thus  secured  the  coast  and  restored  the  water  route 
between  Syria  and  Egypt  for  future  operations,  Seti  re- 
turned to  Egypt,  where  a  triumph  awaited  him  as  he 
passed  the  frontier  and  on  his  arrival  at  Thebes,  such  as 
the  grandees  of  the  realm  had  not  witnessed  for  two 
generations  (BAR,  III,  83/.;  85  /.;  87/.;  81;  89-94; 
98-113). 

291.  This  campaign  was  quite  sufficient  to  restore 
southern  Palestine  to  the  kingdom  of  the  Pharaoh,  and 
probably  also  most  of  northern  Palestine.  Seti's  opera- 
tions in  Asia  were  now  interrupted  by  a  campaign  against 
the  Libyans  west  of  the  Nile  mouths  who  never  failed 
to  improve  the  opportunity  of  lax  government  in  Egypt 
to  push  into  the  Delta  and  settle  there.  The  next  season 
we  find  him  in  Galilee,  storming  the  walled  city  of 
Kadesh  (not  to  be  confused  with  Kadesh  on  the 
Orontes),  in  the  Amorite  kingdom,  founded  by  Ab- 
dashirta  and  Aziru  (p.  282),  now  forming  a  kind  of 
buffer  state  in  the  Orontes  valley  between  Palestine  on 
the  south  and  the  southern  Hittite  frontier  on  the  north. 
After  harrying  its  territory  and  probably  taking  Ka- 
desh, Seti  pushed  northward  against  the  Hittites,  now 


THE  REORGANIZATION  OF  THE  EMPIRE  299 


under  their  king,  ]\Ierasar  (cuneiform  Mursili),  son  of 
Seplel  (cuneiform  Shubbiluliuma),  who  had  entered 
into  treaty  relations  with  Egypt  toward  the  close  of  the 
Eighteenth  Dynasty.  Somewhere  in  the  Orontes  valley 
Seti  came  into  contact  with  them  and  the  first  battle 
between  the  Hittites  and  a  Pharaoh  occurred.  It  is, 
not  probable  that  he  met  the  main  army  of  the  Hittites; 
certain  it  is  that  he  did  not  shake  their  power  in  Syria; 
Kadesh  on  the  Orontes  remained  in  their  hands,  and  at 
most,  Seti  could  not  have  accomplished  more  than  to 
check  their  southern  advance.  The  boundary  which 
he  had  established  in  Asia  roughly  coincided  inland 
with  the  northern  limits  of  Palestine,  and  must  have  in- 
cluded also  Tyre  and  the  Phoenician  coast  south  of  the 
mouth  of  the  Litany.  Though  much  increasing  the 
territory  of  Egypt  in  Asia,  it  represented  but  a  small 
third  of  what  she  had  once  conquered  there.  Under 
these  circumstances,  it  would  have  been  quite  natural 
for  Seti  to  continue  the  war  in  Syria.  For  some  reason, 
however,  he  did  not,  in  so  far  as  we  know,  ever  appear 
with  his  forces  in  Asia  again;  and  either  at  this  time  or 
later,  he  negotiated  a  treaty  of  peace  with  the  Hittite 
king,  Metella,  who  had  succeeded  his  father,  Merasar 
(BAR,  III,  82,  2;  120-152;  375;  377). 

292.  Returning  to  Egypt,  he  devoted  himself  to  the 
interests  of  peace,  espvecially  to  restoring  the  temples  of 
the  gods  defaced  during  the  Aton  revolution,  only 
partially  repaired  by  Harmhab.  At  all  the  great 
sanctuaries  of  the  old  gods  his  buildings  were  now 
rising  on  a  scale  unprecedented  in  the  palmiest  days  of 
the  Empire.  In  front  of  the  pylon  of  xAmenhotep  III, 
forming  the  fa9ade  of  the  state  temple  at  Karnak,  Seti 
continued  the  vast  colonnaded  hall  planned  and  begun 
by  his  father,  and  surpassing  in  size  even  the  enormous 


300 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


unfinished  hypostyle  of  Amenhotep  III  at  Luxor.  He 
completed  some  of  the  columns  of  the  northern  aisles 
as  well  as  the  north  wall,  on  the  outside  of  which  his 
sculptors  engraved  a  colossal  series  of  reliefs  portraying 
his  campaigns.  Mounting  from  the  base  to  the  coping 
they  cover  the  entire  wall  (over  two  hundred  feet  long) 
Similar  works  existed  in  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty 
temples,  but  they  have  all  perished,  and  Seti's  battle- 
reliefs  therefore  form  the  most  imposing  work  of  the 
kind  now  surviving  in  Egypt.  Like  his  fathers  of  the 
Eighteenth  Dynasty,  he  erected  a  great  mortuary  temple 
on  the  western  plain  of  Thebes,  and  another  yet  more 
splendid  at  Abydos,  having  a  side  chapel  for  the  serv-ices 
of  the  old  kings,  especially  of  the  First  and  Second  Dy- 
nasties, whose  tombs  still  lie  in  the  desert  behind  the 
temple.  The  list  of  their  names  which  he  engraved  upon 
the  walls  still  forms  one  of  the  most  important  sources 
for  our  chronological  arrangement  and  assignment  of  the 
Pharaohs.  A  temple  at  Memphis,  probably  another 
at  Heliopolis,  with  doubtless  others  in  the  Delta  of 
which  we  know  nothing,  completed  the  series  of  Seti's 
greater  buildings  (Note  VII;  BAR,  111,200-221;  225- 
243;  80-156;  495). 

293.  These  works  drew  heavily  upon  his  treasury, 
and  he  personally  explored  the  road  leading  to  the  gold 
mines  of  Gebel  Zebara,  finally  digging  a  well  and 
establishing  a  station  on  this  road  thirty-seven  miles 
from  the  river  (just  above  Edfu).  Then  Seti  estab- 
lished the  income  from  the  mines  thus  reached  as  a 
permanent  endowment  for  his  temple  at  Abydos,  and 
called  down  terrifying  curses  on  any  posterity  who  should 
violate  his  enactments.  Yet  within  a  year  after  his 
death  they  had  ceased  to  be  effective  and  had  to  be  re- 
newed by  his  son.    In  a  similar  attempt  further  south 


THE  REORGAXIZATIOX  OF  THE  EMPIRE  301 


on  the  road  to  the  Wady  Alaki,  a  well  two  hundred  feet 
deep  failed  to  reach  water  (BAR,  III,  170-195;  263; 
289). 

294.  The  art  developed  in  connection  with  Seti's 
buildings  was  hardly  less  strong,  virile  and  beautiful 
than  that  prevailing  during  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty. 
His  battle-reliefs  are  the  most  ambitious  attempt  at 
elaborate  composition  left  by  the  surviving  school  of  the 
Eighteenth  Dynasty,  although  the  finest  reliefs  of  the 
time  are  to  be  found  in  Seti's  temple  at  Abydos,  in 
which  there  is  a  rare  combination  of  softness  and  refine- 
ment, with  bold  and  sinuous  lines  and  exquisite 
modelling. 

295.  Beyond  Seti^s  ninth  year  we  know  practically 
nothing  of  his  reign.  He  seems  to  have  spent  his 
energies  upon  his  extensive  buildings,  and  among  these 
he  did  not  forget  the  excavation  of  the  largest  tomb  yet 
made  in  the  valley  of  the  kings  at  Thebes.  It  descends 
into  the  mountain  through  a  series  of  galleries  and  ex- 
tensive halls  no  less  than  four  hundred  and  seventy  feet 
in  oblique  depth.  His  last  days  were  clouded  with 
conflicts  over  the  succession  between  his  eldest  son  and 
a  younger  brother,  Ramses,  son  of  the  queen  Tuya. 
Some  time  before  his  approaching  jubilee,  while  the 
obelisks  for  it  were  still  unfinished,  Seti  died  (about 
1292  B.  c),  having  reigned  over  twenty  years  since  his 
own  father's  death.  The  body,  still  preserved  by  happy 
accident,  shows  him  to  have  been  one  of  the  stateliest 
figures  that  ever  sat  upon  the  throne  of  Egypt. 

296.  On  Seti's  death  Prince  Ramses  brushed  aside 
his  eldest  brother  without  a  moment's  hesitation  and 
seized  the  throne.  But  the  usual  court  devices  were  im- 
mediately resorted  to.  He  lost  no  time,  however,  in 
making  himself  strong  at  Thebes,  the  seat  of  power. 


302 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


Thither  he  immediately  hastened,  probably  from  the 
Delta,  and  celebrated  in  the  state  temple  the  great 
annual  Feast  of  Opet.  Having  gained  the  priests  of 
Amon,  he  devoted  himself  with  great  zeal  to  pious 
works  in  memory  of  his  father,  whose  magnificent 
mortuary  temple  at  Abydos  had  been  left  unfinished 
by  Seti.  This  sumptuous  building  having  been  com- 
pleted, he  restored  its  endowments  already  violated, 
and  generously  furnished  it.  These  and  similar  works 
required  him  to  continue  his  father's  efforts  to  increase 
the  revenue  from  the  Nubian  gold  countries,  and  he 
succeeded  where  Seti  had  failed,  in  supplying  with 
water  the  road  to  the  mines  of  the  Wadi  Alaki.  Such 
enterprises  of  internal  exploitation  were  but  preparatory 
in  the  plans  of  R^amses.  His  ambition  held  him  to 
greater  purposes;  and  he  contemplated  nothing  less 
than  the  recovery  of  the  great  xA.siatic  empire,  conquered 
by  his  predecessors  of  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty  (BAR, 
n,  251-293). 


XXI 


THE  WARS  OF  RAMSES  II 

297.  We  have  seen  that  the  Nineteenth  Dynasty  had 
inherited  a  ven^  dangerous  situation  in  Syria.  \Yhen 
Ramses  II  ascended  the  throne  the  Hiitites  had  re- 
mained in  undisputed  possession  of  their  Syrian  con- 
quests for  probably  more  than  twenty  years  since  the 
only  attempt  by  Seti  I  to  dislodge  them.  The  long 
peace  probably  concluded  with  Seti  gave  their  king, 
Metella  (cuneiform  Muttallu),  an  opportunity,  of 
which  he  made  good  use,  to  render  their  position  in 
Syria  impregnable,  by  pushing  southward  and  seizing 
Kadesh,  the  key  to  the  Orontes  valley  and  the  strongest 
fortress  in  Syria. 

298.  Ramses's  plan  for  the  war  was  Hke  that  of  his 
great  ancestor,  Thutmose  III:  he  first  gained  the  coast, 
that  he  might  use  one  of  its  harbours  as  a  base,  enjoying 
quick  and  easy  communication  with  Egypt  by  water. 
An  illegible  limestone  stela  cut  into  the  face  of  the  rocks 
overlooking  the  Xahr  el-Kelb  (Dog  River)  near  Berut, 
our  only  source  for  this  event,  shows  that  it  took  place 
in  the  ''year  four."  Meantime  ^Nletella  was  collecting 
probably  the  largest  force  that  Egypt  had  ever  met,  con- 
taining probably  not  less  than  twenty  thousand  men. 
We  find  among  them  the  old  eoemies  of  Egypt  in  Syria : 
the  kings  of  Xaharin,  Arvad,  Carchemish,  Kode, 
Kadesh,  Nuges,  Ekereth  (Ugarit)  and  Aleppo.  Besides 

303 


304 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


these,  Mettella's  subject  kingdoms  in  xVsia  Minor,  like 
Kezweden  and  Pedes,  were  drawn  upon;  and  not  con- 
tent with  the  army  thus  collected,  he  emptied  his 
treasury  to  tempt  the  mercenaries  of  Asia  IMinor  and 
the  Mediterranean  islands:  Lycian  pirates,  Mysians, 
Cilicians,  and  Dardanians  took  service  in  the  Hittite 
ranks. 

299.  Ramses  on  his  part  had  not  been  less  active  in 
securing  mercenary  support.  Nubian  levies,  not  un- 
known in  the  Egyptian  army  since  the  remote  days  of 
the  old  Kingdom,  and  especially  the  '^Sherden"  or 
Sardinians,  long  ago  employed  in  the  Pharaoh's  Syrian 
garrisons  (p.  252),  were  now  a  recognized  contingent. 
Thus  Ramses  likewise  commanded  a  force  of  not  less 
than  twenty  thousand  men  all  told.  He  divided  these 
troops  into  four  divisions,  each  named  after  one  of  the 
great  gods:  Amon,  Re,  Ptah  and  Sutekh;  and  himself 
took  personal  command  of  the  division  of  Amon  (BAR, 
III,  297;  306  /.;  491). 

300.  About  the  end  of  April  of  his  fifth  year  (1288 
B.  c),  when  the  rains  of  Syria  had  ceased,  Ramses 
marched  out  of  Tharu,  on  his  northeastern  frontier,  at 
the  head  of  these  troops.  The  division  of  Amon,  with 
whom  the  Pharaoh  was,  formed  the  advance,  and  the 
other  divisions,  Re,  Ptah  and  Sutekh,  followed  in  the 
order  mentioned.  A  month  later  we  find  him  marching 
down  the  Orontes,  northward,  till  he  camped  on  a  height 
overlooking  the  vast  plain  in  which  lay  Kadesh,  only 
a  day's  march  distant,  with  its  battlements  probably 
visible  on  the  northern  horizon,  toward  which  the 
Orontes  wound  its  way  across  the  plain  (BxAR,  III,  491; 
BK). 

301.  Day  after  day  Ramses'  officers  had  reported  to 
him  their  inability  to  find  any  trace  of  the  enemy,  and 


THE  WARS  OF  RA^ISES  II 


305 


Camp  of 
Division  n 
ofAmon 


had  added  their  impression  that  he  vas  still  far  in  the 
north.  At  this  juncture  two  Beduin  of  the  region 
appeared  and  stated  that  they  had  deserted  from  the 
Hittite  ranks,  and  that  the  Hittite  king  had  retreated 

northward  to  the  district  of   

Aleppo,  north  of  Tunip. 
In  view  of  the  failure  of  his 
scouting  parties  to  find  the 
enemy,  Ramses  readily  be- 
lieved this  story,  broke  camp 
early,  crossed  the  river  with 
the  division  of  Amon  and 
pushed  rapidly  on  to  Ka- 
desh,  which  he  reached  by 
noon,  while  the  divisions 
of  Re,  Ptah  and  Sutekh, 
marching  in  the  order 
named,  straggled  far  behind. 
Meantime  the  crafty  ]Metel- 
la,  seeing  that  the  story  of 
his  two  Beduin,  whom  he 
has  sent  out  for  the  very 
purpose  of  deceiving  Ram- 
ses, has  been  implicitly  ac- 
cepted, quickly  transfers 
his  entire  army  from  the 
northwest  of  the  city  to  the 
east  side  of  the  river,  and 
while  Ramses  passes  north- 
ward along  the  west  side  of 
Kadesh,  ^Nletella  deftly  dodges  him,  moving  southward 
along  the  east  side  of  the  city,  always  keeping  it  between 
him  and  the  Eg^'ptians  to  prevent  his  troops  from 
being  seen.    As  he  draws  in  on  the  east  and  southeast 


Asiatics 
—  Egyptians 


0  5Km. 
0  . 

The  Battle  of  Kadesh. 
Positions  of  the  opposing 


forces  at  the 
Asiatic  attack. 


time  of  the 


306 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


of  the  city  he  has  secured  a  position  on  Ramses'  flank, 
from  which  he  can  completely  isolate  the  Pharaoh  from 
his  southern  divisions,  threatening  the  destruction  of 
Ramses  and  his  army.  The  Egyptian  forces  were 
now  roughly  divided  into  two  groups:  near  Kadesh 
were  the  two  divisions  of  Amon  and  Re,  while  far 
southward  the  divisions  of  Ptah  and  Sutekh  have  not 
yet  crossed  at  the  ford  of  Shabtuna.  The  division  of 
Sutekh  was  so  far  away  that  nothing  more  was  heard 
of  it  and  it  took  no  part  in  the  day's  action.  Ramses 
halted  on  the  northwest  of  the  city,  not  far  from  and 
perhaps  on  the  very  ground  occupied  by  the  Asiatic 
army  a  short  time  before. 

302.  Here  he  camped  in  the  early  afternoon,  and  the 
division  of  Amon,  coming  up  shortly  afterward,  bivou- 
acked around  his  tent.  The  weary  troops  were  re- 
laxing, feeding  their  horses  and  preparing  their  own 
meal,  when  two  Asiatic  spies  were  brought  in  by 
Ramses*  scouts  and  taken  to  the  royal  tent.  Brought 
before  Ramses  after  a  merciless  beating,  they  confessed 
that  Metella  and  his  entire  army  were  concealed  behind 
the  city.  Thoroughly  alarmed,  the  young  Pharaoh 
hastily  summoned  his  commanders  and  oflBcials,  chided 
them  bitterly,  and  commanded  the  vizier  to  bring  up 
the  division  of  Ptah  with  all  speed,  supposing  that  Re 
was  almost  within  call.  He  therefore  at  this  juncture 
little  dreamed  of  the  desperate  situation  into  which  he 
had  been  betrayed,  nor  of  the  catastrophe  which  at  that 
very  moment  was  overtaking  the  unfortunate  division 
of  Re.  Already  Metella's  chariotry  had  issued  from 
the  south  side  of  Kadesh  and  quickly  crossing  the  river, 
struck  the  unsuspecting  division  of  Re  while  on  the 
march,  cut  it  in  two  and  scattered  the  two  portions  far 
and  wide.    Some  fled  northward  toward  Ramses' 


THE  WARS  OF  RAMSES  II 


307 


Amon 


soqpAsiattc 
infantry 

Kade^h 


camp  in  a  wild  rout,  and  the  first  intimation  received 
by  the  Pharaoh  of  the  appaUing  disaster  which  now 
faced  him  was  the  headlong  flight  of  these  fugitives  of 
the  annihilated  division,  among  whom  were  two  of  his 
own  sons.  As  they  burst 
over  the  barricade  into  the 
astonished  camp,  with  the 
Hittite  chariotry  in  hot 
pursuit  close  upon  their 
heels,  they  inevitably  swept 
along  with  them  northward 
the  surprised  and  defense- 
less division  of  Amon.  The 
bulk  of  Ramses'  available 
force  was  thus  in  flight, 
his  southern  divisions  were 
miles  away  and  separated 
from  him  by  the  whole  mass 
of  twenty-five  hundred  of 
the  enemy's  chariotry,  whose 
wings  now  rapidly  swelled 
out  on  either  hand  and  en- 
folded the  camp.  The  dis- 
aster was  complete. 

303.  Taken  with  but  short 
shrift  for  preparation,  the 
young  Pharaoh  hesitated  not 
a  moment  in  attempting  to 
cut  his  way  out  and  to 
reach  his  southern  columns. 
With  only  his  household  troops,  his  immediate  followers 
and  the  officers,  who  happened  to  be  at  his  side,  he 
mounted  his  waiting  chariot  and  boldly  charged  into 
the  advance  of  the  Hittite  pursuit  as  it  poured  into  his 


Asiatics 
»  'Ramses  aEgypti&n( 


0  5Km. 
0  5It 

The  Battle  of  Kadbsh. 

Showing  Ramses  IPs  di- 
vided forces  and  his  envelop- 
ment by  the  enemy  in  the 
second  stage  of  the  battle. 


308 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


camp  on  the  west  side;  but  perceiving  how  heavily  the 
enemy  was  massed  before  him,  immediately  understood 
that  further  onset  in  that  direction  was  hopeless. 
Retiring  into  the  camp  again,  he  must  have  noted  how 
thin  was  the  eastern  wing  of  the  surrounding  chariots 
along  the  river  where  there  had  not  yet  been  time  for 
the  enemy  to  strengthen  their  line.  As  a  forlorn  hope 
he  charged  this  line  with  an  impetuousity  that  hurled 
the  Asiatics  in  his  immediate  front  pell-mell  into  the 
river.  Again  and  again  Ramses  renewed  the  charge, 
finally  producing  serious  discomfiture  in  the  enemy's 
line  at  this  point.  Had  the  mass  of  the  Hittite  chariotry 
now  swept  in  upon  his  rear  from  the  west  and  south  he 
must  certainly  have  been  lost.  But  to  his  great  good 
fortune  his  camp  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  these 
troops  and,  dismounting  from  their  chariots,  they  had 
thrown  discipline  to  the  winds  as  they  gave  themselves 
up  to  the  rich  plunder.  Thus  engaged,  they  were  sud- 
denly fallen  upon  by  a  body  of  Ramses*  "recruits"  who 
may  possibly  have  marched  in  from  the  coast  to  join  his 
army  at  Kadesh.  At  any  rate,  they  did  not  belong  to 
either  of  the  southern  divisions.  They  completely  sur- 
prised the  plundering  Asiatics  in  the  camp  and  slew 
them  to  a  man. 

304.  The  sudden  offensive  of  Ramses  along  the  river 
and  the  unexpected  onslaught  of  the  "recruits"  must 
have  considerably  dampened  the  ardour  of  the  Hittite 
attack,  giving  the  Pharaoh  an  opportunity  to  recover 
himself.  These  newly  arrived  "recruits,"  together 
with  the  returning  fugitives  from  the  unharmed  but 
scattered  division  of  Amon,  so  augmented  his  power, 
that  even  though  Metella  now  sent  in  his  reserves  of  a 
thousand  chariots,  the  Pharaoh,  by  prodigies  of  personal 
valour,  still  kept  his  scanty  forces  together,  till  the  be- 


THE  WARS  OF  RAMSES  II 


309 


lated  division  of  Ptah  arrived  on  the  field  as  evening 
drew  on.  Caught  between  the  opposing  lines,  the 
Hittite  chariotry  was  driven  into  the  city,  probably  with 
considerable  loss,  and  Ramses  was  saved.  What  made 
the  issue  a  success  for  Ramses  was  his  salvation  from 
utter  destruction,  and  that  he  eventually  held  possession 
of  the  field  added  little  practical  advantage.  His  losses 
were  doubtless  much  heavier  than  those  of  the  enemy, 
and  he  was  glad  enough  to  lead  his  shattered  forces 
back  to  Egypt.  None  of  his  records  makes  any  claim 
that  he  captured  Kadesh,  as  is  so  frequently  stated  in 
the  current  histories  (BAR,  III,  298-351;  BK). 

305.  Once  safely  extricated  from  the  perilous  position 
into  which  his  rashness  had  betrayed  him,  Ramses  was 
very  proud  of  his  exploit  at  Kadesh.  On  the  temple 
walls  at  Abu  Simbel,  at  the  Ramesseum,  his  mortuary 
temple  at  Thebes,  at  Luxor,  Karnak,  Abydos  and  pro- 
bably on  other  buildings  now  perished,  his  artists  exe- 
cuted a  vast  series  of  vivacious  reliefs  depicting  Ramses' 
camp,  the  flight  of  his  sons,  the  Pharaoh's  furious  charge 
down  to  the  river,  and  the  arrival  of  the  recruits  who 
rescued  the  camp,  all  accompanied  by  numerous  ex- 
planatory inscriptions.  These  sculptures  are  better 
known  to  modern  travellers  in  Egypt  than  any  other  like 
monuments  in  the  country.  They  are  twice  accom- 
panied by  a  report  on  the  battle  which  reads  like  an 
oflScial  document.  There  early  arose  a  poem  on  the 
battle,  of  which  we  shall  later  have  more  to  say.  These 
sources  have  enabled  us  to  trace  with  certainty  the 
maneuvres  which  led  up  to  the  battle  of  Kadesh,  the 
first  battle  in  history  which  can  be  so  studied.  We 
see  that  already  in  the  thirteenth  century  b.  c.  the  com- 
manders of  the  time  understood  the  value  of  placing 
troops  advantageously  before  battle.    The  immense 


310  THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


superiority  to  be  gained  by  clever  maneuvres  masked, 
from  the  enemy,  was  clearly  comprehended  by  the  Hittite 
king  when  he  executed  the  first  flank  movement  of 
which  we  hear  m  the  early  orient;  and  the  plains  of 
Syria,  already  at  that  remote  epoch,  witnessed  notable 
examples  of  that  supposedly  modem  science,  which 
was  brought  to  such  perfection  by  Napoleon, — the 
science  of  winning  the  victory  before  the  battle  (BAR, 
III,  298-351;  BK). 

306.  Arrived  in  Thebes,  Ramses  enjoyed  the  usual 
triumph  in  the  state  temple,  but  the  moral  effect  of  his 
return  to  Egypt  immediately  after  the  battle  without 
even  laying  siege  to  Kadesh,  was  immediately  evident 
among  the  dynasts  of  Syria  and  Palestine,  who  now 
revolted.  The  rising  spread  southward  to  the  very 
gates  of  Ramses'  frontier  forts  in  the  northeastern 
Delta.  We  see  him,  therefore,  obliged  to  begin  again 
at  the  very  bottom  to  rebuild  the  Egyptian  empire  in 
Asia  and  recover  by  weary  campaigns  even  the  territory 
which  his  father  had  won.  It  was  not  until  his  eighth 
year,  after  three  years  spent  in  recovermg  Palestine,  that 
Ramses  was  again  pushing  down  the  valley  of  the 
Orontes,  where  he  must  have  finally  succeeded  in  dis- 
lodging the  Hittites.  In  Naharin  he  conquered  the 
country  as  far  as  Tunip,  which  he  also  reduced  and 
placed  a  statue  of  himself  there.  But  the  Hittites  soon 
stirred  the  region  to  further  revolt,  and  Ramses  again 
found  them  in  Tunip,  which  he  retook  by  storm.  His 
lists  credit  him  w^ith  having  subdued  Naharin,  Lower 
Retenu  (North  Syria),  Arvad,  the  Keftyew,  and  Ketne 
in  the  Orontes  valley.  It  is  thus  evident  that  Ram- 
ses' ability  and  tenacity  as  a  soldier  had  now  really 
endangered  the  Hittite  empire  in  Syria,  although 
it  is  very  uncertain  whether  he  succeeded  in  holding 


THE  WARS  OF  RAMSES  II 


311 


these  northern  conquests  (BAR,  III,  355-360;  364- 
366). 

307.  When  he  had  been  thus  campaigning  probably 
some  fifteen  years,  Metella,  the  Hittite  king,  either  died 
in  battle  or  at  the  hands  of  a  rival,  and  his  brother, 
Khetasar  (cuneiform  Hattusil),  who  succeeded  him. 
proposed  to  the  Pharaoh  a  permanent  peace  and  a 
treaty  of  alliance.  In  Ramses'  twenty-first  year  (1272 
B.  c.)  Khetasar's  messengers  bearing  the  treaty  reached 
the  Egyptian  court,  now  in  the  Delta.  Having  been 
drafted  in  advance  and  accepted  by  representatives  of 
the  two  countries,  it  was  now  in  its  final  form,  in  eigh- 
teen paragraphs  inscribed  on  a  silver  tablet.  It  then 
proceeded  to  review  the  former  relations  between  the 
two  countries,  passed  then  to  a  general  definition  of  the 
present  pact,  and  thus  to  its  special  stipulations.  Of 
these  the  most  important  were:  the  renunciation  by 
both  rulers  of  all  projects  of  conquest  against  the  other, 
the  reaffirmation  of  the  former  treaties  existing  between 
the  two  countries,  a  defensive  alliance  involving  the  as- 
sistance of  each  against  the  other's  foes;  co-operation 
in  the  chastisement  of  delinquent  subjects,  probably  in 
Syria;  and  the  extradition  of  political  fugitives  and 
immigrants.  A  codicil  provides  for  the  humane  treat- 
ment of  these  last.  Two  transcripts  of  the  treaty  have 
been  found  at  Thebes,  engraved  upon  temple  walls, 
and  last  summer  (1906)  the  Hittite  copy  in  Babylonian 
cuneiform  on  a  clay  tablet,  was  found  at  Boghaz-Koi 
in  Asia  Minor  (Note  X;  BAR,  III,  375,  1.  10;  373; 
367-391). 

308.  It  will  be  noticed  that  the  treaty  nowhere  refers 
to  the  boundary  recognized  by  both  countries  in  Syria. 
It  is  difiicult  to  form  any  idea  of  the  location  of  this 
boundary.    It  is  not  safe  to  affirm  that  Ramses  had 


312 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


permanently  advanced  the  boundary  of  his  father's 
kingdom  in  Asia,  save  probably  on  the  coast,  where  he 
carved  two  more  stelae  on  the  rocks  near  Berut,  beside 
that  of  his  fourth  year  (p.  303).  Thirteen  years  later 
(1259  B.  c.)  the  Hittite  king  himself  visited  Egypt  to 
consummate  the  marriage  of  his  eldest  daughter  as  the 
wife  of  Ramses.  His  visit  was  depicted  before  Ramses' 
temple  at  Abu  Simbel,  with  accompanying  narrative  in- 
scriptions, while  the  Hittite  princess  was  given  a  promi- 
nent position  at  court  and  a  statue  beside  her  royal 
husband  in  Tanis.  Court  poets  celebrated  the  event 
and  pictured  the  Hittite  king  as  sending  to  the  king  of 
Kode  and  summoning  him  to  join  in  the  journey  to 
Egypt  that  they  might  do  honour  to  the  Pharaoh.  The 
occurrence  made  a  popular  impression  also,  and  a  tale, 
which  was  not  put  into  \\Titing,  so  far  as  we  know,  until 
Greek  times,  began  with  the  marriage  and  told  how 
afterward,  at  the  request  of  her  father,  an  image  of  the 
Theban  Khonsu  was  sent  to  the  land  of  the  princess, 
that  the  god's  power  might  drive  forth  the  evil  spirits 
from  her  afflicted  sister.  The  friendly  relations  between 
the  two  kingdoms  prospered,  and  it  is  even  probable  that 
Ramses  received  a  second  daughter  of  Khetasar  in 
marriage.  Throughout  Ramses'  long  reign  the  treaty 
remained  unbroken  and  the  peace  continued  at  least 
into  the  reign  of  his  successor,  INIerneptah  (BAR,  IH, 
392;  394^24;  416/.;  425/.;  427/.;  429-447). 

309.  From  the  day  of  the  peace  compact  with  Khe- 
tasar, Ramses  was  never  called  upon  to  enter  the  field 
again.  Unimportant  revolts  in  Nubia,  and  a  Libyan 
campaign,  often  vaguely  referred  to  on  his  monuments, 
did  not  require  the  Pharaoh's  personal  leadership. 

310.  With  the  Asiatic  campaigns  of  Ramses  II  the 
military  aggressiveness  of  Egypt  which  had  been  awak- 


THE  WARS  OF  RAMSES  II 


313 


ened  under  Ahmose  I  in  the  expulsion  of  the  Hjksos 
was  completely  exhausted.  Nor  did  it  ever  revive. 
Henceforward  for  a  long  time  the  Pharaoh's  army  is 
but  a  weapon  of  defense  against  foreign  aggression; 
a  weapon,  however,  which  he  was  himself  unable  to 
control, — and  before  which  the  venerable  line  of  R>e 
was  finally  to  disappear  (BAR,  III,  448-491). 


/ 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  RAMSES  II 

311.  The  dominance  of  Egypt  in  Asiatic  affairs  had 
irresistibly  dra^n  the  centre  of  power  on  the  Nile  from 
Thebes  to  the  Delta.  Thebes  remained  the  religious 
capital  of  the  state  and  at  the  greater  feasts  in  its  temple 
calendar  the  Pharaoh  was  often  present,  but  his  perma- 
nent residence  was  in  the  north.  His  constant  presence 
here  resulted  in  a  development  of  the  cities  of  the  eastern 
Delta  such  as  they  had  never  before  enjoyed.  Tanis 
became  a  great  and  flourishing  city,  with  a  splendid 
temple,  while  in  the  WadyTumilat,the  natural  approach 
to  Egypt  from  Asia,  Ramses  built  a  "  store-city,"  which 
he  called  Pithom,  or  "  House  of  Atum"  (Ex.  I,  11).  At 
the  western  end  of  the  Wady  he  and  Seti  founded  a  city 
just  north  of  Heliopolis,  now  kno^m  as  Tell  el-Yehudi- 
yeh.  Somewhere  in  the  eastern  Delta  he  founded  a 
residence  city,  Per-Ramses,  or  "House  of  Ram.ses." 
Its  situation  is  not  certain,  although  it  has  often  been 
thought  to  be  identical  with  Tanis;  but  it  was  close  to 
the  eastern  frontier,  and  was  also  accessible  to  seafaring 
traffic.  It  was  familiar  to  the  Hebrews  as  '^Raamses" 
(Ex.  I,  11),  and  through  this  Pharaoh's  other  great  en- 
terprises here,  this  region  became  knowm  as  "  the  land  of 
Ramses,"  a  name  so  completely  identified  with  it  that 
Hebrew  tradition  read  it  back  into  the  days  of  Joseph, 
before  any  Ramses  had  ever  sat  on  the  throne.  In 

314 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  RAMSES  II 


315 


Memphis  and  Abydos  little  has  survived.  At  Thebes 
he  spent  enormous  resources  in  the  completion  of  his 
father's  mortuary  temple,  another  beautiful  sanctuary 
for  his  own  mortuary  service,  known  to  all  visitors  at 
Thebes  as  the  Ramesseum;  a  large  court  and  pylon 
in  enlargement  of  the  Luxor  temple;  while,  surpassing 
in  size  all  buildings  of  the  ancient  or  modern  world,  his 
architects  completed  the  colossal  colonnaded  hall  of 
the  Kamak  temple,  already  begun  under  the  first 
Ramses,  the  Pharaoh's  grandfather.  Few  of  the  great 
temples  of  Egypt  have  not  some  chamber,  hall,  colon- 
nade or  pylon  which  bears  his  name,  in  perpetuating 
which  the  king  stopped  at  no  desecration  or  destruction 
of  the  ancient  monuments  of  the  country.  But  in  spite 
of  this  fact,  his  own  legitimate  building  was  on  a  scale 
quite  surpassing  in  size  and  extent  anything  that  his 
ancestors  had  ever  accomplished.  The  buildings  which 
he  erected  were  filled  with  innumerable  supplementary 
monuments,  especially  colossal  statues  of  himself  and 
obelisks.  The  former  are  the  greatest  monolithic 
statues  ever  executed;  one  at  Tanis  having  been 
ninety  feet  in  height,  of  a  single  block  weighing  nine 
hundred  tons,  while  another,  still  lying  in  fragments 
in  the  Ramesseum,  weighed  about  a  thousand  tons. 
As  the  years  passed  and  he  celebrated  jubilee  after 
jubilee  the  obelisks  which  he  erected  in  commemora- 
tion of  these  festivals  rapidly  rose  among  his  tem- 
ples. At  Tanis  alone  he  erected  no  less  than  four- 
teen, all  of  which  are  now  prostrate;  three  at  least 
of  his  obehsks  are  in  Rome;  and  of  the  two  which 
he  erected  in  Luxor,  one  is  in  Paris.  The  generous 
endowment  necessary  for  the  erection  of  each  such 
temple,  must  have  been  a  serious  economic  problem 
(BAR,  III,  82,  2;  492-537;  543-549;  PT,  I,  22-24; 


316 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


AS,  III,  29;  PI,  p.  4;  PKGH,  p.  22;  NA,  pp.  2, 

9-11,  pi  I). 

312.  Notwithstanding  the  shift  of  the  centre  of 
gravity  northward,  the  south  was  not  neglected.  In 
Nubia  Ramses  became  the  patron  deity;  no  less  than 
seven  new  temples  arose  there,  dedicated  to  the  great 
gods  of  Egypt,  to  the  Pharaoh  and  his  queen,  Nefretiri. 
Nubia  became  more  and  more  Egyptianized,  and 
between  the  first  and  second  cataracts  the  old  native 
chiefs  had  practically  disappeared,  the  administrative 
officials  of  the  Pharaoh  were  in  complete  control,  and 
there  was  even  an  Egv^ptian  court  of  justice,  with  the 
viceroy  as  chief  judge  (ELAE,  504). 

313.  Ramses'  great  building  enterprises  were  not 
achieved  without  vast  expense  of  resources,  especially 
those  of  labour.  There  is  probably  little  question  of 
the  correctness  of  the  Hebrew  tradition  in  attributing 
the  oppression  of  some  tribe  of  their  ancestors  to  the 
builder  of  Pithom  and  Ramses;  that  they  should  have 
fled  the  country  to  escape  such  labour  is  quite  in  accord 
with  what  we  know  of  the  time.  Intercourse  with 
Palestine  and  Syria  was  now  more  inimate  than  ever. 
A  letter  of  a  frontier  official,  dated  in  the  reign  of 
Ramses  II's  successor,  tells  of  passing  a  body  of  Edo- 
mite  Beduin  through  a  fortress  in  the  Wady  Tumilat, 
that  they  might  pasture  their  herds  by  the  pools  of 
Pithom  as  the  Hebrews  had  done  in  the  days  of  Joseph. 
In  the  rough  memoranda  of  a  commandant's  scribe, 
probably  of  the  frontier  fortress  of  Tharu,  in  the 
Isthmus  of  Suez,  we  find  also  noted  the  people  whom 
he  had  allowed  to  pass:  messengers  with  letters  for  the 
officers  of  the  Palestinian  garrisons,  for  the  king  of 
Tyre,  and  for  officers  with  the  king  (Merneptah)  then 
campaigning  in  Syria,  besides  officers  bearing  reports. 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  RAMSES  II 


317 


or  hurrying  out  to  Syria  to  join  the  Pharaoh.  Although 
there  was  never  a  continuous  fortification  of  any  length 
across  the  Isthmus  of  Suez,  there  was  a  line  of  strong- 
holds, of  which  Tharu  was  one  and  probably  Ramses 
another,  stretching  well  across  the  zone  along  which 
Egypt  might  be  entered  from  Asia.  This  zone  did 
not  extend  to  the  southern  half  of  the  isthmus,  which 
was  well  nigh  impassable,  but  was  confined  to  the  ter- 
ritory between  Lake  Timsah  and  the  Mediterranean, 
whence  the  line  of  fortresses  therefore  extended  south- 
ward, passed  the  lake  and  bent  westward  into  the  ^Yady 
Tumilat.  Hence  Hebrew  tradition  depicts  the  escape 
of  the  Israehtes  across  the  southern  half  of  the  isthmus 
south  of  the  line  of  defences,  which  might  have  stopped 
them.  The  tide  of  commerce  that  ebbed  and  flowed 
through  the  Isthmus  of  Suez  was  even  fuller  than  under 
the  Eighteenth  Dynasty,  while  on  the  ^Mediterranean 
the  Egyptian  gallevs  must  have  whitened  the  sea  (BAR, 
III,  636-638;  630-635). 

314.  On  the  Pharaoh's  table  were  rarities  and  delica- 
cies from  Cyprus,  the  land  of  the  Hittites  and  of  the 
Amorites,  Babylonia  and  Naharin.  Elaborately  wrought 
chariots,  weapons,  whips  and  gold-mounted  staves  from 
the  Palestinian  and  Syrian  towns  filled  his  magazine, 
while  his  stalls  boasted  fine  horses  of  Babylon  and  cattle 
of  the  Hittite  country.  The  appurtenances  of  a  rich 
man's  estate  included  a  galley  plying  between  Egypt 
and  the  Syrian  coast  to  bring  to  the  pampered  Egyptian 
the  luxuries  of  Asia;  and  even  Seti  I's  mortuary  temple 
at  Abydos  possessed  its  own  sea-going  vessels,  given  by 
Ramses,  to  convey  the  temple  offerings  from  the  east. 
The  country  swarmed  with  Semitic  and  other  Asiatic 
slaves,  while  Phoenician  and  other  alien  merchants  were 
so  numerous  that  there  was  a  foreign  quarter  in  ]\Iem- 


318 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


phis,  with  its  temples  of  Baal  and  Astarte;  and  these 
and  other  Semitic  gods  found  a  place  in  the  Egyptian 
pantheon.  The  dialects  of  Palestine  and  vicinity,  of 
which  Hebrew  was  one,  lent  many  a  Semitic  word  to 
the  current  language  of  the  day,  as  well  as  select  terms 
with  which  the  learned  scribes  were  fond  of  garnishing 
their  writings.  We  find  such  words  commonly  in  the 
Nineteenth  Dynasty  papyri  four  or  five  centuries  before 
they  appear  in  the  Hebrew  writings  of  the  Old  Testament. 
The  royal  family  was  not  exempt  from  such  influence; 
Ramses'  favourite  daughter  was  called  "Bint-Anath," 
a  Semitic  name,  which  means  "Daughter  of  Anath"  (a 
Syrian  goddess),  and  one  of  the  royal  steeds  was  named 
"Anath-herte,"  "  Anath  is  Satisfied." 

315.  The  effect  of  the  vast  influx  of  Asiatic  life,  al- 
ready apparent  under  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty,  was  now 
profound,  and  many  a  foreigner  of  Semitic  blood 
found  favour  and  ultimately  high  station  at  the  court 
or  in  the  government.  A  Syrian  named  Ben-'Ozen  was 
chief  herald  or  marshal  of  Merneptah's  court,  but  he 
was  never  regent  as  sometimes  stated.  The  commercial 
opportunities  of  the  time  also  brought  them  wealth  and 
power;  a  Syrian  sea-captain  named  Ben-Anath  was 
able  to  secure  a  son  of  Ramses  II  as  a  husband  for  his 
daughter.  In  the  army  great  careers  were  open  to  such 
foreigners,  although  the  rank  and  file  of  the  Pharaoh's 
forces  were  replenished  from  western  and  southern 
peoples  rather  than  from  Asia.  In  a  body  of  five 
thousand  of  Ramses'  troops  not  a  single  native  Egyptian 
was  to  be  found;  over  four  thousand  of  them  were 
Sherden  and  Libyans  and  the  remainder  were  Nubians. 
The  dangerous  tendencies  inherent  in  such  a  system  had 
already  shown  themselves  and  were  soon  felt  by  the 
royal  house,  although  powerless  to  make  head  against 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  RAMSES  II 


319 


them.  The  warhke  sphit  which  had  made  Eg}^pt  the 
first  world  power  had  endured  but  a  few  generations, 
and  a  naturally  peaceful  people  were  returning  to  their 
accustomed  peaceful  life;  while  at  the  very  moment 
when  this  reversion  to  their  old  manner  of  living  was 
taking  place,  the  eastern  ^lediterranean  and  the  Libyan 
tribes  offered  the  Pharaoh  an  excellent  class  of  mercen- 
ary soldiery  which  under  such  circumstances  he  could 
not  fail  to  utilize  (PA,  IV,  15,  2-17=111,  8;  Ibid.  IV,  3, 
10  f;  BAR,  III,  274;  MA,  II,  50;  MC  d'Ab.,  No.  1136, 
p.  422;  RIH,  32;  BT,  VI,  437;  Ostracon,  Louvre,  Inv., 
2262;  Dever.,  Cat.,  p.  202;  Rec,  16,  64;  BK,  9). 

316.  While  the  wars  in  Asia  had  not  recovered  the 
empire  of  Thutmose  III,  all  Palestine  and  possibly  some 
of  southern  Syria  continued  to  pay  tribute  to  the  Phar- 
aoh, while  on  the  south  the  boundary  of  the  Empire 
was  as  before  at  Napata,  below  the  fourth  cataract. 
The  wealth  thus  gained  still  served  high  purposes.  Art, 
though  now  decadent,  still  lived.  Nothing  better  was 
ever  produced  by  the  Egyptian  sculptor  than  the  superb 
statue  of  the  youthful  Ramses,  which  forms  the  chef 
d'oeuvre  of  the  Turin  Museum;  and  even  colossal 
statues  like  those  of  Abu  Simbel  are  sometimes  fine 
portraits.  However  much  the  refinement  of  the  Eigh- 
teenth Dynasty  may  be  wanting  in  the  great  hall  at 
Karnak,  it  is  nevertheless  the  most  impressive  building 
in  Egypt,  and  at  the  last,  as  even  Ruskin  admits,  size 
does  tell.  Nor  should  it  be  forgotten  that  the  same 
architects  produced  Ramses'  mortuary  temple,  the 
Ramesseum,  a  building  not  inferior  in  refined  beauty 
to  the  best  works  of  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty.  Again  no 
visitor  to  the  temple  of  Abu  Simbel  will  ever  forget  the 
solemn  grandeur  of  this  lonely  sanctuary  looking  out 
upon  the  river  from  the  sombre  clifi"s.    But  among  the 


320 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


host  of  buildings  which  Ramses  exacted  from  his  archi- 
tects, there  were  unavoidably  many  which  were  devoid 
of  all  life  and  freshness,  or  like  his  addition  to  the 
Luxor  temple,  heavy,  vulgar  and  of  very  slovenly 
workmanship.  All  such  buildings  were  emblazoned 
with  gayly  coloured  reliefs,  interesting  as  compositions, 
but  often  badly  drawn,  depicting  the  valiant  deeds  of 
the  Pharaoh  in  his  various  wars,  especially,  as  we  have 
already  noticed,  his  desperate  defence  at  the  battle  of 
Kadesh. 

317.  This  last  incident  was  not  only  influential  in 
graphic  art;  it  also  ^Tought  powerfully  upon  the  imag- 
ination of  the  court  poets,  one  of  whom  produced  a 
prose  poem  on  the  battle,  which  displays  a  good  deal  of 
literar}"  skill,  and  is  the  nearest  approach  to  the  epic  to 
be  found  in  Egyptian  literature.  A  copy  of  this  com- 
position on  papyrus  was  made  by  a  scribe  named 
Pentewere  (Pentaur),  who  was  misunderstood  by  early 
students  of  the  document  to  be  the  author  of  the  poem. 
The  real  author  is  unknown,  although  ''Pentaur"  still 
commonly  enjoys  the  distinction.  In  manner  this 
heroic  poem  strikes  a  new  note;  but  it  came  at  a  period 
too  late  in  the  history  of  the  nation  to  be  the  impulse 
toward  a  really  great  epic.  The  martial  age  and  the 
creative  spirit  were  passed  in  Egypt  (ELAE;  GLWBL; 
BAR,  III,  305-315). 

In  the  tale,  however,  the  Nineteenth  D}Tiasty  really 
showed  great  fertility,  combined  with  a  spontaneous 
naturalism,  which  quite  swept  away  all  trace  of  the 
artificialities  of  the  Middle  Kingdom.  Already  in  the 
Middle  Kingdom  and  probably  earlier,  there  had 
grown  up  collections  of  artless  folk-tales  woven  often 
about  a  historical  motive,  and  such  tales,  clothed 
in  the  simple  language  of  the  people,  had  early  ii) 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  RAMSES  II 


321 


the  Eighteenth  Dynasty  gained  sufficient  literary 
respectabihty  to  be  put  into  writing.  AMiile  the 
Eighteenth  Dynasty  possessed  such  tales  as  these,  yet 
by  far  the  larger  part  of  our  surviving  manuscripts 
of  this  class  date  from  the  Nineteenth  Dynasty  and 
later.  It  is  now  that  we  find  the  story  of  the  conflict 
between  the  Hyksos  king,  Apophis,  and  Sekenenre  at 
Thebes,  a  tale  of  which  the  lost  conclusion  doubtless 
contained  a  popular  version  of  the  expulsion  of  the 
Hyksos  (p.  176).  The  people  now  loved  to  dwell  upon 
the  exploits  of  Thutmose  Ill's  commanders,  like  the 
tale  of  Thutiy  and  his  capture  of  Joppa,  perhaps  the 
prototype  of  Ali  Baba  and  the  Forty  Thieves  "  (p.  238). 
But  the  artless  charm  of  the  story  of  the  doomed  prince 
quite  surpasses  such  historical  tales.  It  furnishes  the 
earliest  known  example  of  that  almost  universal  motive 
in  which  a  youth  must  pass  through  some  ordeal  or 
competition  in  order  to  win  a  wife.  A  pastoral  tale  of 
idyllic  simplicity  represents  two  brothers  as  living 
together,  the  elder  being  married  and  a  householder, 
while  the  younger  dwells  with  him  much  after  the  man- 
ner of  a  son.  At  the  hands  of  his  elder  brother's  wife, 
there  then  befell  the  younger  an  adventure  later  appro- 
priated for  the  Hebrew  hero,  Joseph.  The  number  of 
such  tales  must  have  been  legion,  and  in  Greek  times 
they  furnished  all  that  many  Greek  writers,  or  even  the 
priest,  ^Nlanetho,  knew  of  early  Egyptian  kings. 

\Miile  much  of  such  literature  is  poetic  in  content  and 
spirit,  it  lacks  poetic  form.  Such  form,  however,  was 
not  wanting.  Besides  the  prescribed  and  formal 
poems  in  praise  of  the  Pharaoh  or  the  gods,  there  were 
many  love-songs,  the  oldest  in  the  world,  which  belong 
among  the  best  contributed  by  the  early  East.  Re- 
ligious poems,  songs  and  hymns  are  now  very  numerous^ 


322  THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


and  some  of  them  display  distinct  literary  character. 
We  shall  revert  to  them  again  in  discussing  the  religion 
of  this  age.  Numerous  letters  from  scribes  and 
officials  of  the  time,  exercises  and  practice  letters  com- 
posed by  pupils  of  the  scribal  schools,  bills,  temple 
records  and  accounts, — all  these  serve  to  fill  in  the 
colour  and  detail  in  a  picture  of  unusual  fullness  and 
interest  (ELAE;  GLWBL;  MCP;  PTAG). 

318.  In  religion  the  age  was  moving  rapidly.  The 
state,  always  closely  connected  with  religion,  was  be- 
coming more  and  more  a  religious  institution,  designed 
to  exalt  and  honour  the  gods  through  its  head,  the 
Pharaoh.  The  state  was  thus  being  gradually  distorted 
to  fulfill  one  function  at  the  expense  of  all  the  rest,  and 
its  wealth  and  economic  resources  were  being  slowly 
engulfed,  until  its  industrial  processes  should  become 
but  incidents  in  the  maintenance  of  the  gods.  The 
priesthood  of  Amon  was  the  strongest  influence  in  this 
direction.  The  High  Priest  of  Amon,  as  head  of  the 
sacerdotal  organization  embracing  all  the  priesthoods 
of  the  country,  controlled  a  most  influential  political 
faction.  Hence  it  was  that  under  Merneptah  (Ramses 
n's  son  and  successor),  and  possibly  already  under 
Ramses  himself,  the  High  Priest  of  Amon  was  able 
to  go  further  and  to  install  his  son  as  his  o^vti  successor, 
a  very  dangerous  precedent.  Thus  there  was  gradually 
arising  the  sacerdotal  state  described  by  Diodorus,  upon 
which  the  Egyptian  priests  of  Greek  times  looked  back 
as  upon  a  golden  age.  As  the  inward  content  of  the 
prevailing  religion  had  already  long  been  determined 
by  the  dominant  priesthood,  so  now  its  outward  mani- 
festations were  being  elaborated  by  them  into  a  vast 
and  inflexible  system,  and  the  popularity  of  every 
Pharaoh  with  the  priesthood  was  determined  by  the 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  R.A3ISES  II 


323 


degree  of  his  acquiescence  in  its  demands  (BAR,  III, 
618;  640;  IV,  4). 

319.  Though  the  state  rehgion  was  made  up  of 
formaUties,  the  Pharaohs  were  not  without  their  own 
ethical  standards,  and  these  were  not  wholly  a  matter  of 
appearances.  The  things  for  which  these  kings  prayed, 
however,  were  not  character  nor  the  blameless  life.  It 
is  material  things  which  they  desire.  A  higher  type  of 
personal  religion  was  developing  among  the  better  class 
of  the  people.  A  fine  hymn  to  Amon,  popular  at  this 
time,  contains  many  of  the  old  ideas  prevalent  in  the 
Aton-faith,  while  other  religious  poems  show  that  a 
personal  relation  is  gradually  growing  up  between  the 
worshipper  and  his  god,  so  that  he  sees  in  his  god  the 
friend  and  protector  of  men.  'Man  feels  also  the  sense 
of  sin  and  cries  out:  "Punish  me  not  for  my  many 
sins.'*  The  proverbial  wisdom  of  the  time  shows  much 
of  the  same  spirit.  Whereas  it  formerly  inculcated  only 
correct  behaviour,  it  now  exhorts  to  hate  evil,  and  to 
abhor  what  the  god  abhors.  Prayer  should  be  the 
silent  aspiration  of  the  heart  and  to  Thoth  the  wise  man 
prays,  "  O  thou  sweet  Well  for  the  thirsty  in  the  desert ! 
It  is  closed  up  for  him  who  speaks,  but  it  is  open  for  him 
who  keeps  silence.  When  he  who  keeps  silence  comes, 
lo  he  finds  the  Well.*'  The  poisonous  power  of  the 
magical  literature  now  everywhere  disseminated  by  the 
priests  gradually  stifled  these  aspirations  of  the  middle 
class,  and  these  the  last  symptoms  of  ethical  and  moral 
life  in  the  religion  of  Egvpt  slowly  disappeared  (BAR, 
IV,  470;  BIHC,  XXVI;  PA,  II,  8,  6;  Ibid,  6,  5-6; 
EHEL;  PSalL,  I,  8,  2  Jj.). 

It  is  at  this  time  that  we  gain  our  sole  glimpse  into 
the  religious  beliefs  of  the  common  people.  The  poor 
man  had  no  place  amid  the  magnificence  of  the  state 


324  THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


temples,  nor  could  he  offer  anything  worthy  the  atten 
tion  of  a  god  of  such  splendour.  He  could  only  resort 
to  the  host  of  minor  genii  or  spirits  of  mirth  and  music, 
the  demi-gods,  who,  frequenting  this  or  that  limited 
region,  had  local  interest  and  inclination  to  assist  the 
humble  in  their  daily  cares  and  needs.  Besides  these 
and  the  old  kings,  the  foreign  gods  of  Syria,  brought  in 
by  the  hosts  of  Asiatic  slaves,  appear  also  among  those 
to  whom  the  folk  appeal;  Baal,  Kedesh,  Astarte, 
Reshep,  Anath  and  Sutekh  are  not  uncommon  names 
upon  the  votive  tablets  of  the  time.  xAuimal  worship 
now  also  begins  to  appear  both  among  the  people  and 
in  oflBcial  circles  (EHEL). 

320.  The  young  Pharaoh  under  whom  these  mo- 
mentous transitions  were  slowly  taking  place  was  too 
plastic  in  dealing  with  them  for  us  to  discover  the 
manner  of  man  he  was.  His  unscrupulous  appropria- 
tion of  the  monuments  of  his  ancestors  does  not  pre- 
possess us  in  his  favour.  In  person  he  was  tall  and 
handsome,  with  features  of  dreamy  and  almost  effemi- 
nate beauty,  in  no  wise  suggestive  of  the  manly  traits 
which  he  certainly  possessed.  After  his  nearly  fifteen 
years  of  arduous  campaigning,  in  which  he  more  than 
redeemed  the  almost  fatal  blunder  at  Kadesh,  he  was 
quite  ready  to  enjoy  the  well  earned  peace.  He  was 
inordinately  vain  and  made  far  more  ostentatious  dis- 
play of  his  wars  on  his  monuments  than  was  ever  done 
by  Thutmose  HI.  He  loved  ease  and  pleasure  and 
gave  himself  up  without  restraint  to  voluptuous  enjoy- 
ments. He  had  an  enormous  harem,  and  the  de- 
scendants of  his  nearly  two  hundred  children  became  a 
Ramessid  class  of  nobles  whom  we  still  find  over  four 
hundred  years  later  bearing  among  their  titles  the  name 
Vlamses,  not  as  a  patronymic,  but  as  the  designation  of 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  RAIVISES  II 


325 


a  class  or  rank.  The  sons  of  his  youth  accompanied 
him  in  his  wars,  and  according  to  Diodorus  one  of 
them  was  in  command  of  each  of  the  divisions  of  his 
army.  His  favourite  among  them  was  Eiamwese, 
whom  he  made  High  Priest  of  Ptah  at  Memphis  (Diod., 
I,  47;  BK,  34). 

321.  As  the  years  passed  Ramses  celebrated  no  less 
than  nine  jubilees,  erecting  a  forest  of  obelisks  to  com- 
memorate them.  His  was  the  sunset  glory  of  the  vener- 
able line  which  he  represented.  One  by  one  the  sons 
of  his  youth  were  taken  from  him  until  twelve  were 
gone,  and  the  thirteenth  was  the  eldest  and  heir  to  the 
throne.  Yet  still  the  old  king  lived  on.  He  lost  the 
vitality  for  aggressive  rule.  The  Libyans  and  the 
maritime  peoples  allied  with  them,  Lycians,  Sardinians 
and  the  .Egean  races,  whom  he  had  once  swept  from  his 
coasts  or  impressed  into  the  sen^ice  of  his  army,  now 
entered  the  western  Delta  with  impunity,  or  even 
pushed  forward  and  settled  there.  Amid  the  splendours 
of  his  magnificent  residence  in  the  eastern  Delta  the 
threatening  conditions  at  its  opposite  extremity  never 
roused  him  from  the  lethargy  into  which  he  had  fallen. 
Finally,  having  ruled  for  sixty-seven  years,  and  being 
over  ninety  years  of  age,  he  passed  away  (1225  b.  c.) 
none  too  soon  for  the  redemption  of  his  empire.  We 
are  able  to  look  into  the  withered  face  of  the  hoary 
nonogenarian,  evidently  little  changed  from  what  he 
was  in  those  last  days  of  splendour  in  the  city  of  Ramses, 
and  the  resemblance  to  the  face  of  the  youth  in  the 
noble  Turin  statue  is  still  very  marked  (BAR,  HI, 
543-560). 

322.  Probably  no  Pharaoh  ever  left  a  more  profound 
impression  upon  his  age.  A  quarter  of  a  century  later 
began  a  line  of  ten  kings  bearing  his  name.    One  of 


326 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


them  prayed  that  he  might  be  granted  a  reign  of  sixty- 
seven  years  like  that  of  his  great  ancestor,  and  all  of 
them  with  varying  success  imitated  his  glory.  He  had 
set  his  stamp  upon  them  all  for  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years,  and  it  was  impossible  to  be  a  Pharaoh  without 
being  a  Ramses  (BAR,  IV,  471). 


XXIII 


THE  FINAL  DECLINE  OF  THE  EMPIRE:  MERNEPTAH 
AND  RAMSES  III 

323.  Egypt  was  now  on  the  defensive.  This  was  the 
resuh  of  conditions  both  within  and  without.  Within, 
the  spirit  which  had  stirred  the  heroes  of  the  Asiatic 
conquests  had  now  vanished;  without  all  was  turbulence 
and  unrest.  The  restless  maritime  peoples  of  the 
northern  Mediterranean,  creeping  along  the  coasts, 
sought  plunder  or  places  for  permanent  settlement,  and 
together  with  the  Libyans  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
peoples  of  remoter  Asia  Minor  on  the  other,  they  broke 
in  wave  on  wave  upon  the  borders  of  the  Pharaoh's 
empire.  Egypt  was  inevitably  throwm  on  the  defensive. 
For  the  next  sixty  years  after  the  death  of  Ramses  II 
we  shall  be  able  to  watch  the  struggle  of  the  Pharaohs 
merely  to  ^preserve  the  empire,  which  it  had  been  the 
ambition  of  their  great  ancestors  rather  to  extend.  At 
this  crisis  in  the  affairs  of  the  nation,  the  enfeebled 
Ramses  was  succeeded  by  his  thirteenth  son,  Merneptah, 
now  far  advanced  in  years.  Thus  one  old  man  suc- 
ceeded another  upon  the  throne.  The  death  of  Ramses 
was  not  at  once  followed  by  any  disturbance  in  the 
Asiatic  dominions.  The  northern  border  in  Syria  was 
still  as  far  north  as  the  upper  Orontes  valley,  including 
at  least  part  of  the  Amorite  country.  With  the  Hittite 
kingdom  he  enjoyed  undisturbed  peace,  even  sending 

327 


328 


THE  EMPIRE:   SECOND  PERIOD 


them  shiploads  of  grain  in  time  of  famine.  By  the  end 
of  his  second  year,  however,  he  had  reason  to  rue  the 
good  will  shown  his  father's  ancient  enemy,  whom  he 
now  discovered  to  be  involved  in  the  incursions  of  the 
maritime  peoples  in  the  western  Delta  in  alliance  with 
the  Libyans.  Thereupon  the  year  three  (about  1223 
B.  c.)  found  widespread  revolt  against  ]\Ierneptah  in 
Asia  from  Askalon  at  the  very  gates  of  Egypt,  to  the 
tribes  of  Israel  and  all  western  Syria-Palestine  as  far  as 
it  was  controlled  by  the  Pharaoh;  all  these  rose  against 
their  Egyptian  overlord.  We  have  nothing  but  a  song 
of  triumph  to  tell  us  of  the  ensuing  war;  but  it  is  evident 
that  Merneptah  appeared  in  Asia  with  his  army  in  his 
third  year.  The  revolting  cities  were  severely  punished 
and  all  Palestine  was  again  humiliated  and  brought 
completely  under  the  yoke,  including  some  of  the  tribes 
of  Israel,  who  had  now  secured  a  footing  in  Palestine, 
as  we  saw  at  the  close  of  the  Eighteenth  and  opening 
of  the  Nineteenth  Dynasty  (pp.  284  fj.).  They  were 
suflBciently  amalgamated  to  be  referred  to  as  ''Israel," 
and  they  here  make  their  first  appearance  in  history  as 
a  people  (BAR,  III,  580, 1.24;  606;  603;  617;  629-35). 

324.  Meantime  the  situation  in  the  west  was  serious 
in  the  extreme;  the  hordes  of  Tehenu-Libyans  were 
pushing  further  into  the  Delta  from  their  settlements 
along  the  northern  coast  of  Africa  west  of  Egypt.  It  is 
possible  that  some  of  their  advance  settlers  had  even 
reached  the  canal  of  Heliopolis.  Little  is  known  of  the 
Libyans  at  this  time.  Immediately  upon  the  Egyptian 
border  seems  to  have  been  the  territory  of  the  Tehenu ; 
further  west  came  the  tribes  known  to  the  Egyptians  as 
Lebu  or  Rebu,  the  Libyans  of  the  Greeks,  by  which 
name  also  the  Egyptians  designated  these  western 
peoples  as  a  whole.    On  the  extreme  west,  and  extend- 


THE  DECLINE:  MERNEPTAH  AND  RAMSES  III  329 


ing  far  into  then  unknown  regions,  lived  the  Meshwesh, 
or  Max}^es  of  Herodotus.  They  were  all  doubtless  the 
ancestors  of  the  Berber  tribes  of  North  Africa.  They 
were  far  from  being  totally  uncivilized  barbarians,  but 
were  skilled  in  war,  well  armed  and  capable  of  serious 
enterprises  against  the  Pharaoh.  Now  rapidly  con- 
solidating under  good  leadership,  they  gave  promise  of 
becoming  an  aggressive  and  formidable  state,  with  its 
frontier  not  ten  days'  march  from  the  Pharaoh's 
residence  in  the  eastern  Delta.  The  whole  western 
Delta  was  strongly  tinctured  with  Libyan  blood  and 
Libyan  families  were  now  constantly  crossing  into  it. 
Others  had  penetrated  to  the  two  northern  oases  which 
lie  southwest  of  the  Fayum.  Meryey,  king  of  the 
Libyans,  forced  the  Tehenu  to  join  him  and,  supported 
by  roving  bands  of  maritime  adventurers  from  the 
coast,  he  invaded  Egypt.  He  brought  his  wife  and  his 
children  with  him,  as  did  also  his  allies,  and  the  move- 
ment was  clearly  an  immigration  as  well  as  an  invasion. 
The  allies  were  the  now  familiar  Sherden  or  Sardinians; 
the  Shekelesh,  possibly  the  Sikeli  natives  of  early  Sicily; 
Ekwesh,  perhaps  Achoeans,  the  Lycians,  who  had  preyed 
on  Egypt  since  the  days  of  Amenhotep  III ;  and  the  Ter- 
esh,  doubtless  the  Tyrsenians  or  Etruscans.  It  is  with 
these  wandering  marauders  that  the  peoples  of  Europe 
emerge  for  the  first  time  upon  the  arena  of  history, 
although  we  have  seen  them  in  their  material  documents 
since  the  Middle  Kingdom.  This  crossing  to  Africa  by 
the  northern  Mediterranean  peoples  is  but  one  of  many 
such  ventures  which  in  prehistoric  ages  brought  over 
the  white  race  whom  we  know  as  Libyans.  Judging  from 
the  numbers  who  were  afterward  slain  or  captured,  the 
Libyan  king  must  have  commanded  at  least  some  twenty 
thousand  men  or  more  (BAR,  III,  576;  579  /.;  595). 


330 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


325.  Merneptah,  at  last  aroused  to  the  situation,  was 
fortifying  Heliopolis  and  Memphis,  when  news  of  the 
danger  reached  him  late  in  March  of  his  fifth  year. 
In  fourteen  days  his  forces  were  ready  to  move,  and  on 
the  morning  of  April  fifteenth,  near  the  Pharaoh's 
chateau  at  Periere  in  the  western  Delta,  battle  was 
joined.  The  contest  lasted  six  hours  when  the  Egyptian 
archers  drove  the  allies  from  the  field  with  immense 
loss.  King  Meryey  had  fled  as  soon  as  he  saw  the  action 
going  against  him.  He  made  good  his  escap)e,  but  all 
his  household  furniture  and  his  family  fell  into  the  hands 
of  the  Egyptians.  The  energetic  pursuit  resulted  in  a 
great  slaughter  and  many  prisoners.  No  less  than  nine 
thousand  of  the  invaders  fell,  of  whom  at  least  one-third 
were  among  the  maritime  allies  of  the  Libyans;  while 
probably  as  many  more  were  taken  prisoner.  Among 
the  dead  were  six  sons  of  the  Libyan  king.  The  booty 
was  enormous.  The  hostile  camp  was  burned;  and 
with  the  booty  came  news  to  the  Pharaoh,  that  the 
Libyans  had  repudiated  and  dethroned  their  discomfited 
king  and  chosen  another  in  his  place  who  was  hostile  to 
him  and  would  fight  him.  It  was  evident  therefore  that 
the  aggressive  party  in  Libya  had  fallen  and  that  no 
further  trouble  from  that  quarter  need  be  apprehended 
during  the  reign  of  Merneptah  at  least  (BAR,  III, 
569-617). 

326.  The  constant  plundering  at  the  hands  of  Libyan 
hordes,  which  the  people  of  the  western  Delta  had 
endured  for  nearly  a  generation  was  now"  ended. 
Not  only  was  a  great  national  danger  averted,  but  an 
intolerable  situation  was  relieved.    The  people  sang: 

The  kings  are  overthrown,  saying,  "Salam!" 

Not  one  holds  up  his  head  among  the  nine  nations  of  the  bow. 

Wasted  is  Tehenu, 


THE  DECLINE:  MERNEPTAH  AND  RAMSES  III  331 


The  Hittite  Land  is  pacified, 

Plundered  is  the  Canaan,  with  every  evil, 

Carried  off  is  Askalon, 

Seized  upon  is  Gezer, 

Yenoam  is  made  as  a  thing  not  existing. 

Israel  is  desolated,  her  seed  is  not, 

Palestine  has  become  a  [defenceless]  widow  for  Egypt. 

All  lands  are  united,  they  are  pacified; 

Every  one  that  is  turbulent  is  bound  by  king  Merneptah. 

(BAR,  III,  616-617;  603  ff.) 

327.  It  is  this  concluding  song,  reverting  also  to 
Memeptah's  triumphs  in  Asia,  which  tells  us  nearly  all 
that  we  know  of  his  Asiatic  war.  It  is  a  kind  of  sum- 
mary of  all  his  victories,  and  forms  a  fitting  conclusion 
of  the  rejoicing  of  the  people. 

328.  Thus  the  sturdy  old  Pharaoh,  although  bowed 
down  with  years,  had  repelled  from  his  empire  the  first 
assault,  premonitory  of  the  coming  storm.  He  reigned 
at  least  five  years  longer,  apparently  enjoying  profound 
peace  in  the  north.  He  strengthened  his  Asiatic  frontier 
u^th  a  fortress  bearing  his  name,  and  in  the  south  he 
quelled  a  rebellion  in  Nubia.  Too  old  to  gather  from 
the  quarries  the  blocks  for  great  buildings,  ]\Ierneptah 
brutally  destroyed  the  monuments  of  his  forefathers. 
He  made  a  quarry  of  the  noble  sanctuary  of  Amenhotep 
III  on  the  western  plain,  ruthlessly  tore  do^Ti  its  walls 
and  split  up  its  superb  statues  to  serve  as  blocks  in  his 
own  mortuary  temple.  We  even  find  Merneptah's 
name  constantly  on  the  monuments  of  his  father,  who 
in  this  respect  had  set  him  a  notorious  example  (PA,  VI, 
pi.  4, 1.  13-pl.  5, 1.  5;  BAR,  III,  606,  note  a;  II,  878  ff.; 
Ill,  602-617). 

329.  After  a  reign  of  at  least  ten  years  Merneptah 
passed  away  (1215  b.  c.)  and  was  buried  at  Thebes  in 
the  valley  with  his  ancestors.    His  body  has  recently 


332 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


been  found  there.  However  much  we  may  despise  him 
for  his  shameful  destruction  of  the  greatest  works  of  his 
ancestors,  it  must  be  admitted  that  at  an  advanced  age, 
when  such  responsibihty  must  have  sat  heavily,  he 
manfully  met  a  grave  crisis  in  the  history  of  his  country, 
which  might  have  thrown  it  into  the  hands  of  a  foreign 
dynasty. 

330.  The  laxity  which  had  accompanied  the  suc- 
cessive rule  of  two  old  men  gave  ample  opportunity  for 
intrigue,  conspiracy  and  the  machinations  of  rival 
factions.  The  death  of  Merneptah  was  the  beginning 
of  a  conflict  for  the  throne  which  lasted  for  many  years. 
As  in  the  Roman  Empire,  we  discern  the  influence  of 
provincial  power,  as  the  viceroy  of  Nubia,  one  Seti, 
probably  thrusts  aside  the  second  of  the  two  pretenders 
Amenmeses  and  Memeptah-Siptah,  who  now  followed 
each  other.  This  Seti,  the  second  of  the  name,  seems 
to  have  ruled  with  some  success;  but  his  lease  of  power 
was  brief;  the  long  uncurbed  nobility,  the  hosts  of 
mercenaries  in  the  armies,  the  powerful  priesthoods,  the 
numerous  foreigners  in  positions  of  rank  at  court, 
ambitious  pretenders  and  their  adherents, — all  these 
aggressive  and  conflicting  influences  demanded  for 
their  control  a  strong  hand  and  unusual  qualities  of 
statesmanship  in  the  ruler.  These  qualities  Seti  II  did 
not  possess,  and  he  fell  a  victim  to  conditions  wliich 
would  have  mastered  many  a  stronger  man  than  he 
(BAE,  III,  640-644;  651). 

331.  With  the  disappearance  of  Seti  II  those  who  had 
overthrown  him  were  unable  to  gain  the  coveted  power 
of  which  they  had  deprived  him.  Complete  anarchy 
ensued.  The  whole  country  fell  into  the  hands  of  the 
nobles,  chiefs  and  rulers  of  to^vms;  famine  and  violence 
were  supreme.    Profiting  by  the  helplessness  of  the 


THE  DECLINE:  MERNEPTAH  AND  RAMSES  III  333 


people  and  the  preoccupation  of  the  native  rulers,  one  of 
those  Syrians  who  had  held  an  official  position  at  the 
court  seized  the  crown,  or  at  least  the  power,  and  ruled 
in  tyranny  and  violence  (BAR,  IV,  398). 

332.  As  might  have  been  expected  the  Libyans  were 
not  long  in  perceiving  the  helplessness  of  Egypt.  Im- 
migration across  the  western  frontier  of  the  Delta  began 
again;  plundering  bands  wandered  among  the  towns 
from  the  vicinity  of  Memphis  to  the  ]\Iediterranean. 
At  this  juncture,  about  1200  b.  c,  there  arose  one 
Setnaklit,  a  strong  man  of  uncertain  origin,  but  possibly 
a  descendant  of  the  old  line  of  Seti  I  and  Ramses  II. 
Although  he  ruled  but  a  year  or  two,  he  succeeded  in 
exterminating  the  pretenders  and  restoring  order. 
Before  he  died  (1198  b.  c.)  he  named  as  his  successor 
his  son,  Ramses,  the  third  of  the  name,  who  had  already 
been  of  assistance  to  him  in  the  government  (BAR,  IV, 
40,  11.  20-22;  405;  399). 

333.  With  the  Ramessid  line,  now  headed  by  Ramses 
III,  Manetho  begins  a  new  dynasty,  the  Twentieth, 
although  the  old  line  was  evidently  already  interrupted 
after  Merneptah.  Ramses  III  immediately  perfected 
the  organization  for  military  service,  depending  more 
and  more  upon  the  foreign  mercenaries  as  the  perma- 
nent element  in  his  army.  The  Libyan  question  and 
the  situation  in  the  western  Delta  were  now  more 
serious  even  than  in  Merneptah's  day.  The  northern 
Mediterranean  peoples,  whom  the  Egyptians  designated 
the  "peoples  of  the  sea,"  were  showing  themselves  there 
in  ever  increasing  numbers.  Among  these,  two  in  par- 
ticular whom  we  have  not  met  before,  the  Thekel  and 
the  Peleset,  better  known  as  the  Philistines  of  Hebrew 
history,  were  prominent.  The  Peleset  were  one  of  the 
early  tribes  of  Crete,  and  the  Thekel  may  have  been  an- 


334 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


other  branch  of  the  pre-Greek  SikeK  or  Sicihans.  These, 
accompanied  by  contingents  of  Denyen  (Danaof),  Sher- 
den,  Weshesh  and  Shekelesh,  had  begun  a  southward 
movement,  some  of  them  impelled  by  pressure  of  Indo- 
Germanic  peoples  (among  them  the  later  Phrygians), 
pushing  into  Asia  Mnor  in  their  rear.  Their  own  racial 
affinities  are  unknown.  Moving  gradually  southward 
in  Syria,  some  of  these  immigrants  had  now  advanced 
perhaps  as  far  as  the  upper  waters  of  the  Orontes  and 
the  kingdom  of  Amor;  while  the  more  venturesome  of 
their  ships  were  coasting  along  the  Delta  and  stealing 
into  the  mouths  of  the  river  on  plundering  expeditions. 
They  readily  fell  in  with  the  plans  of  Themer,  the 
Libyan  king,  to  invade  and  plunder  the  rich  and  fer- 
tile Delta.  By  land  and  water  they  advanced  into 
the  western  Delta  where  Ramses  III  promptly  met  and 
overthrew  them.  Their  ships  were  destroyed  or  cap- 
tured and  their  army  beaten  back  with  enormous  loss. 
Over  twelve  thousand  five  hundred  were  slain  upon 
the  field  and  at  least  a  thousand  captives  were  taken. 
Of  the  killed  a  large  proportion  were  from  the  ranks 
of  the  sea-rovers.  To  strengthen  his  frontier  against 
the  Libyans,  Ramses  now  built  a  town  and  stronghold 
named  after  himself  upon  the  western  road  w^here  it  left 
the  Deha  (MAAG;  BAR,  IV,  402;  44;  39;  52-55;  42; 
57/.;  47,1.73;  102;  107;  111,588;  600). 

334.  Meanwhile  the  rising  tide  from  the  north  was 
threatening  gradually  to  overwhelm  the  Egyptian 
Empire;  we  have  seen  its  outermost  waves  breaking  on 
the  shores  of  the  Delta.  It  was  now  in  full  motion 
southward  through  Syria.  Its  hosts  were  approaching 
both  by  land,  with  their  families  in  curious,  heavy,  two- 
wheeled  ox-carts,  and  by  sea  in  a  numerous  fleet  that 
skirted  the  Syrian  coast.    Well  armed  and  skilled  in 


THE  DECLINE:  MERNEPTAH  AND  RA^ISES  III  335 


warfare  as  the  invaders  were,  the  Syrian  city-states 
were  unable  to  withstand  their  onset.  They  overran 
all  the  Hittite  country  of  northern  Syria  as  far  as 
Carchemish  on  the  Euphrates,  past  Arvad  on  the 
Phoenician  coast,  and  up  the  Orontes  valley  to  the 
kingdom  of  Amor,  which  they  devastated.  The  Syrian 
dominions  of  the  Hittites  must  have  been  lost  and  the 
Hittite  power  in  Syria  completely  broken.  The  fleet 
visited  Alasa,  or  Cyprus;  and  nowhere  was  an  effec- 
tive resistance  offered  them.  In  Amor  they  established 
a  central  camp  and  apparently  halted  for  a  time  (BAR, 
IV,  64;  77). 

335.  Ramses  III  threw  himself  with  great  energy  into 
the  preparations  for  repelling  the  attack.  He  fortified 
his  Syrian  frontier  and  rapidly  gathered  a  fleet,  which 
he  distributed  in  the  northern  harbours.  He  then  set 
out  for  Syria  to  lead  the  campaign  himself.  Where  the 
land-battle  took  place  we  are  unable  to  determine,  but 
as  the  Northerners  had  advanced  to  Amor,  it  w^as  at 
most  not  further  north  than  that  region.  We  learn 
nothing  from  Ramses  Ill's  records  concerning  it  beyond 
vague  and  general  statements  of  the  defeat  of  the  enemy, 
although  in  his  reliefs  we  see  his  Sherden  mercenaries 
breaking  through  the  scattered  lines  of  the  enemy  and 
plundering  their  ox-carts,  bearing  the  women  and  chil- 
dren and  the  belongings  of  the  Northerners.  Ramses 
was  also  able  to  reach  the  scene  of  the  naval  battle, 
probably  in  one  of  the  northern  harbours  on  the  coast 
of  Phoenicia,  early  enough  to  participate  in  the  action 
from  the  neighbouring  shore.  He  had  manned  his  fleet 
with  masses  of  the  dreaded  Eg}-ptian  archers,  whose  fire 
was  so  effective  that  the  ranks  of  the  heavy  armed 
Northerners  were  completely  decimated  before  they 
could  approach  within  boarding  distance.    As  the 


336 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


Egyptians  then  advanced  to  board,  the  enemy's  ships 
were  thrown  into  confusion  and  many  were  capsized. 
Those  who  escaped  the  fleet  and  swam  ashore  were 
captured  by  the  waiting  Egyptians  on  the  beach.  The 
Pharaoh's  suzerainty,  at  least  as  far  north  as  Amor, 
could  not  now  be  questioned  by  the  invaders.  They 
continued  to  arrive  in  Syria,  only  to  become  vassals  of 
Egypt,  paying  tribute  into  the  treasury  of  the  Pharaoh. 
The  Egyptian  Empire  in  Asia  had  again  been  saved  and 
Ramses  returned  to  his  Delta  residence  to  enjoy  a  well- 
earned  triumph  (BAR,  IV,  59-82;  403). 

336.  He  was  now  given  but  a  short  respite,  for  another 
migration  of  the  peoples  in  the  far  west  caused  an  over- 
flow which  again  threatened  the  Delta  in  the  eleventh 
year  of  the  king.  The  ]\Ieshwesh,  a  tribe  living  behind 
the  Libyans,  invaded  the  Libyan  country  and  laid  it 
waste,  thus  forcing  the  unfortunate  Libyans,  already 
twice  punished,  into  another  alliance  against  Egypt, 
The  leader  of  the  movement  was  Meshesher,  son  of 
Keper,  king  of  the  Meshwesh,  whose  firm  purpose  was 
to  migrate  and  settle  in  the  Delta.  Ramses  attacked 
the  allies  under  the  walls  of  Hatsho,  his  frontier  fortress, 
and  put  them  to  flight.  Meshesher,  the  chief  of  the 
Meshwesh,  was  slain  and  his  father  Keper  was  cap- 
tured, two  thousand  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  of 
their  followers  fell,  while  two  thousand  and  fifty-two,  of 
whom  over  a  fourth  were  females,  were  taken  captive. 
The  western  tribes  had  thus  been  hurled  back  from  the 
borders  of  the  Delta  for  the  third  successive  time,  and 
Ramses  had  no  occasion  to  apprehend  any  further  ag- 
gressions from  that  quarter.  The  expansive  power  of 
the  Libyan  peoples,  although  by  no  means  exhausted, 
now  no  longer  appeared  in  united  national  action,  but 
Sit  they  had  done  from  prehistoric  times  they  continued 


THE  DECLINE :  MERNEPTAH  AND  RAMSES  III  337 


to  sift  gradually  into  the  Delta  in  scattered  and  des- 
ultory migration,  not  regarded  by  the  Pharaoh  as  a 
source  of  danger  (BAR,  IV,  83-114;  405;  224;  145). 

337.  Following  closely  upon  the  last  Libyan  cam- 
paign, Ramses  found  it  necessary  again  to  appear  in 
Amor  with  his  army.  The  limits  and  the  course  of  the 
campaign  are  but  obscurely  hinted  at  in  the  meagre 
records  now  surviving.  He  stormed  at  least  five  strong 
cities,  one  of  which  was  in  Amor;  another  was  perhaps 
Kadesh;  and  two,  one  of  which  was  called  Ereth,  were 
defended  by  Hittites.  He  probably  did  not  penetrate 
far  into  the  Hittite  territory,  although  its  cities  were 
rapidly  falling  away  from  the  Hittite  king  and  much 
weakened  by  the  attacks  of  the  sea-peoples.  It  was  the 
last  hostile  passage  between  the  Pharaoh  and  the 
Hittites;  both  empires  were  swiftly  declining  to  their 
fall,  and  in  the  annals  of  Egypt  we  never  again  hear  of 
the  Hittites  in  Syria.  He  now  organized  the  ^Asiatic 
possessions  of  Egypt  as  stably  as  p>ossible,  the  boundary 
very  evidently  not  being  any  further  north  than  that  of 
Merneptah,  that  is,  just  including  the  x\morite  kingdom 
on  the  upper  Orontes.  To  ensure  the  stability  which  he 
desired  he  built  new  fortresses  wherever  necessary  in 
Syria  and  Palestine;  somewhere  in  Syria  he  also  erected 
a  temple  of  Amon,  containing  a  great  image  of  the 
state  god,  before  which  the  Asiatic  dynasts  were  obliged 
to  declare  their  fealty  to  Ramses  by  depositing  their 
tribute  in  its  presence  every  year.  Only  a  revolt  of  the 
Beduin  of  Seir  interrupted  the  peaceful  government  of 
the  Pharaoh  in  Asia  from  this  time  forth  (BAR,  IV, 
115-135;  141;  219;  406;  404). 

338.  The  influence  of  Eg}-ptian  commerce  and  ad- 
ministration in  Syria  w^as  evident  in  one  important 
particular  especially,  for  it  was  now  that  the  cumbrous 


338 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


and  inconvenient  clay  tablet  was  gradually  supple- 
mented in  Syria  by  the  handy  papyrus.  With  the  papy- 
rus paper,  the  hand  customarily  written  upon  it  in 
Egypt  now  made  its  way  into  Phoenicia,  where  before 
the  tenth  century  B.  c.  it  developed  into  an  alphabet 
of  consonants,  which  was  quickly  transmitted  to  the 
Ionian  Greeks  and  thence  to  Europe  (BAR,  IV,  576; 
582). 

339.  The  suppression  of  occasional  disorders  in 
Nubia,  caused  no  disturbance  of  the  profound  peace, 
which  now  settled  down  upon  the  Empire.  Intercourse 
and  commerce  with  the  outside  world  were  now  fostered 
by  the  Pharaoh  as  in  the  great  days.  The  temples  of 
Amon,  Re,  and  Ptah  had  each  its  own  fleet  upon  the 
Mediterranean  or  the  Red  Sea,  transporting  to  the  god's 
treasury  the  products  of  Phoenicia,  Syria  and  Punt. 
Other  fleets  of  the  Pharaoh  brought  copper  and  mal- 
achite from  Sinai  and  its  now  familiar  wealth  from 
Punt.  Navigation  was  now  perhaps  on  a  larger  scale 
than  ever  before.  Ramses  tells  of  a  sacred  barge  of 
Amon  at  Thebes,  which  was  two  hundred  and  twenty- 
four  feet  long,  built  in  his  yards,  of  enormous  timbers 
of  cedar  of  Lebanon  (BAR,  IV,  211;  270;  328;  407- 
409;  209). 

340.  The  Pharaoh's  wealth  now  enabled  him  to 
undertake  buildings  and  works  of  public  utility. 
Throughout  the  kingdom,  and  especially  in  Thebes  and 
the  royal  residence,  he  planted  numerous  trees,  offering 
grateful  shade,  in  a  land  devoid  of  natural  forests.  He 
also  resumed  building,  at  a  standstill  since  the  death  of 
Ramses  II.  On  the  western  plain  of  Thebes,  at  the 
point  now  called  Medinet  Habu,  he  began  a  large  and 
splendid  temple  to  Amon,  which,  as  it  grew  from  year 
to  year,  became  a  vast  record  of  the  king's  achievements 


THE  DECLINE :  MERNEPTAH  AND  RAIVISES  III  339 


in  war  which  the  modern  visitor  may  read,  tracing  it 
from  year  to  year  as  he  passes  from  the  earHest  halls 
in  the  rear  to  the  latest  courts  and  pylon  at  the  front. 
Here  he  may  see  the  hordes  of  the  North  in  battle  with 
Ramses'  Sherden  mercenaries.  The  first  naval  battle 
on  salt  water,  of  which  we  know  anything,  is  here  de- 
picted, and  in  these  reliefs  we  may  study  the  armour, 
clothing,  weapons,  war-ships  and  equipment  of  these 
northern  peoples  with  whose  advent  Europe  for  the 
first  time  emerges  upon  the  stage  of  the  early  world. 
Other  buildings  of  his  have  for  the  most  part  perished; 
a  small  temple  of  Amon  at  Karnak,  and  a  sanctuary  for 
Khonsu,  only  begun  by  Ramses  III,  still  survive.  In 
the  residence  city  he  laid  out  a  magnificent  quarter 
and  garden  for  Amon,  possessing  nearly  eight  thou- 
sand slaves  for  its  service.  He  also  erected  in  the 
city  a  temple  of  Sutekh  in  the  temonos  of  Ramses  IFs 
temple.  The  art  displayed  by  these  buildings,  in  so 
far  as  they  have  survived,  is  clearly  in  a  decadent  stage. 
The  lines  are  heavy  and  indolent,  the  colonnades  have 
none  of  the  old-time  soaring  vigour;  they  visibly  labour 
under  the  burden  imposed  upon  them,  expressing  the 
sluggish  spirit  of  the  decadent  architect.  The  work 
also  is  careless  and  slovenly  in  execution.  The  reliefs 
which  cover  the  vast  surfaces  of  the  Medinet  Habu 
temple  are  with  few  exceptions  but  weak  imitations  of 
the  fine  sculptures  of  Seti  I  at  Karnak,  badly  drawn 
and  executed  without  feeling.  Only  here  and  there 
do  we  find  a  flash  of  the  old-time  power  (BAR,  IV,  213; 
215;  410;  195-215;  1-26;  69-82;  250-265;  311-328; 
225;  362;  369). 

341.  The  imitation  so  evident  in  the  art  of  Ramses 
IIFs  reign  is  characteristic  of  the  time  in  all  respects. 
The  inspiring  figure  of  a  young  and  active  Pharaoh 


340 


THE  EMPIRE:   SECOND  PERIOD 


hurrying  his  armies  from  frontier  to  frontier  of  his 
empire  and  repeatedly  hurUng  back  the  most  formidable 
invasions  Eg}'pt  had  ever  suffered,  awoke  no  response 
in  the  conventional  soul  of  the  priestly  scribe,  whose  lot 
it  vas  to  write  the  record  of  these  things  for  the  temple 
wall.  He  possessed  only  the  w^orn  and  long  spent  cur- 
rency of  the  older  dynasties  from  which  he  drew  w^hole 
hymns,  songs  and  lists  to  be  furbished  up  and  made  to 
do  service  again  in  perpetuating  the  glory  of  a  really  able 
and  heroic  ruler.  Even  the  king  himself  considered  it 
his  highest  purpose  to  restore  and  reproduce  the  times 
of  Ramses  II. 

342.  This  was  especially  evident  in  his  attitude  to- 
ward the  religious  conditions  inherited  from  the  Nine- 
teenth Dynasty.  He  made  no  effort  to  shake  off  the 
priestly  influences  with  which  the  crown  was  encum- 
bered. The  temples  were  fast  becoming  a  grave 
political  and  economic  menace.  In  the  face  of  this  fact 
Ramses  III  continued  the  policy  of  his  ancestors,  and 
with  the  most  lavish  liberality  poured  the  wealth  of  the 
royal  house  into  the  sacred  coffers.  The  opulent 
splendour  with  which  the  rituals  of  the  great  gods  were 
daily  observed  beggars  description.  In  making  the 
great  temple  balances  for  weighing  the  offerings  to  Re 
at  Heliopolis  nearly  two  hundred  and  twelve  pounds  of 
gold  and  four  hundred  and  sixty-one  pounds  of  silver 
were  consumed.  The  reader  may  peruse  pages  of  such 
descriptions  in  the  great  Papyrus  Harris,  of  which  we 
shall  later  give  some  account.  Such  magnificence, 
while  it  might  frequently  be  due  to  incidental  gifts  of 
the  king,  must  nevertheless  be  supported  by  an  enor- 
irous  income,  derived  from  a  vast  fortune  in  lands, 
slaves  and  revenues.  The  records  of  Ramses  III  for 
the  first  and  only  time  in  the  course  of  Egyptian  history, 


THE  DECLINE  :  MERNEPTAH  AND  RAMSES  III  341 


enable  us  to  determine  the  total  amount  of  property 
owned  and  controlled  by  the  temples.  They  owned  not 
less  than  one  and  a  quarter  and  very  probably  two 
per  cent,  of  the  population  as  slaves.  In  lands  we  find 
the  sacred  endowments  amounting  to  fifteen  per  cent, 
of  the  available  land  of  the  country.  These  are  the  only 
items  in  the  temple  estates  which  can  be  safely  compared 
with  the  total  national  wealth  and  resources;  but  they 
by  no  means  complete  the  list  of  property  held  by  the 
temples.  They  owned  nearly  a  half  million  head  of 
large  and  small  cattle;  their  combined  fleets  numbered 
eighty-eight  vessels,  some  fifty-three  w^orkshops  and 
ship-yards  consumed  a  portion  of  the  raw  materials, 
which  they  received  as  income ;  while  in  Syria,  Kush 
and  Egypt  they  owned  in  all  one  hundred  and  sixty-nine 
towns.  WTien  we  remember  that  all  this  vast  property 
in  a  land  of  less  than  ten  thousand  square  miles  and 
some  five  or  six  million  inhabitants  was  entirely  exempt 
from  taxation  it  will  be  seen  that  the  economic  equilib- 
rium of  the  state  was  endangered  (BAR,  IV,  363;  199; 
202;  198-210;  256;  285;  151-412;  146-150;  166/.). 

343.  These  extreme  conditions  were  aggravated  by 
the  fact  that  no  proper  proportion  had  been  observed 
in  the  distribution  of  gifts  to  the  gods.  By  far  too  large 
a  share  of  them  had  fallen  to  the  lot  of  the  insatiable 
Amon,  the  demands  for  whose  innumerable  temples 
far  exceeded  those  of  all  others  put  together.  In  his 
festal  calendar,  now  introduced  by  Ramses  III,  we 
find  that  there  was  an  annual  feast  day  of  Amon  on  an 
average  every  three  days,  not  counting  the  monthly 
feasts.  Yet  Ramses  III  later  lengthened  even  the 
feasts  of  this  calendar.  As  in  the  days  of  the  Eighteenth 
Dynasty  conquerors,  the  bulk  of  the  spoil  from  his  wars 
went  into  the  treasury  of  Amon.    The  result  of  this 


342 


THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


long  continued  policy  was  inevitable.  Of  the  nearly 
three  quarters  of  a  million  acres  of  land  held  by  the 
temples,  Amon  owned  over  five  hundred  and  eighty- 
three  thousand,  over  five  times  as  much  as  his  nearest 
competitor.  Re  of  Heliopolis.  Of  the  fifteen  per  cent, 
of  the  lands  of  the  entire  country  held  by  all  the  temples, 
Amon  thus  owned  over  two-thirds.  In  other  items  of 
Amon's  wealth  the  same  proportion  is  observable.  His 
estate  and  his  revenues,  second  only  to  those  of  the  king, 
now  assumed  an  important  economic  role  in  the  state, 
and  the  political  power  wielded  by  a  community  of 
priests  who  controlled  such  vast  wealth  was  from  now 
on  a  force  which  no  Pharaoh  could  ignore.  Other 
similar  prerogatives  also  now  came  to  Amon.  His 
High  Priest  had  in  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty  become 
head  of  all  the  priesthoods  of  Egypt;  now  his  Theban 
temple  became  the  sacerdotal  capital,  where  the  records 
of  the  other  temples  were  kept,  and  the  furtive  power 
of  Amon  was  thus  gradually  extended  over  all  the 
sacred  estates  in  the  land  (BAR,  IV,  164;  146;  189- 
226;  219;  218;  139-145;  236-237;  25-34;  190;  224; 
405;  167;  165;  170/.). 

344.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose,  as  is  commonly  done, 
that  Ramses  III  was  solely  or  even  chiefly  responsible 
for  these  conditions.  They  began  in  the  enormous 
gifts  to  the  temples,  especially  to  Amon,  by  the  con- 
querors of  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty.  By  generations  of 
this  policy  the  vast  wealth  of  the  temples  had  gradually 
been  accumulated,  and  against  the  insatiable  priesthoods 
long  accustomed  to  the  gratification  of  unlimited  ex- 
actions, Ramses  III  was  unable  and  indeed  did  not 
attempt  to  make  a  stand.  Yet  the  treasury,  with  its 
income  gradually  shrinking,  must  have  sorely  felt  the 
draughts  upon  it.    It  was  now  with  the  greatest  diffi- 


I 


THE  DECLINE :  MERNEPTAH  AND  RAMSES  III  343 


culty  that  day-labourers  for  the  state  could  wring  their 
wages  of  grain  from  the  complacent  scribal  overseer. 
Thus  while  the  poor  in  the  employ  of  the  state  were 
starving  at  the  door  of  an  empty  treasury,  the  store- 
houses of  the  gods  were  groaning  with  plenty,  and 
Amon  was  yearly  receiving  over  two  hundred  and  five 
thousand  bushels  of  grain  for  the  offerings  at  his  annual 
feasts  alone  (BAR,  IV,  202;  157  /.;  174;  ELAE, 
124-126). 

345.  The  only  forces  which  Ramses  III  and  his 
contemporaries  could  bring  into  play  against  the 
powerful  priestly  coteries  were  the  numerous  foreigners 
among  the  slaves  owned  by  the  crown.  These  slaves 
were  now  largely  natives  of  Syria,  Asia  Minor  and 
Libya,  especially  Syria,  and  as  the  king  found  them 
more  and  more  useful,  they  gradually  gained  high 
office  in  the  state  and  at  the  court,  especially  as  "royal 
butlers."  It  was  a  situation,  as  Erman  has  remarked, 
precisely  like  that  at  the  court  of  the  Egyptian  sultans 
of  the  iVIiddle  Ages.  While  all  was  outwardly  splendour 
and  tranquillity  and  the  whole  nation  was  celebrating 
the  king  who  had  saved  the  Empire,  the  forces  of  decay 
which  had  for  generations  been  slowly  gathering  in  the 
state  were  rapidly  reaching  the  acute  stage.  An  insa- 
tiable and  insidious  priesthood  commanding  enormous 
wealth,  a  foreign  army  ready  to  serve  the  master  who 
paid  most  liberally,  a  personal  following  of  alien 
slaves,  and  a  host  of  royal  relatives  and  dependants, — 
these  were  the  factors  which  Ramses  III  was  constantly 
forced  to  manipulate  and  employ,  each  against  the 
others  in  a  situation  of  ever  increasing  difficulty  and 
complication  (BAR,  IV,  405;  419  ff.). 

346.  The  first  serious  trouble  discernible  was  the 
insubordination  of  one  of  +he  viziers.    This  past,  the 


344  THE  EMPIRE:  SECOND  PERIOD 


first  royal  jubilee  was  celebrated  with  the  usual  splen- 
dour at  Memphis.  Something  over  a  year  after  this 
stately  commemoration,  as  the  old  king  was  beginning 
to  feel  his  years,  a  more  serious  crisis  developed.  In 
order  to  crown  a  pretender  from  the  numerous  harem 
children,  a  conspiracy  against  the  Pharaoh's  life  was 
formed.  Involved  in  it  were  no  less  than  eleven  harem 
officials  of  various  ranks,  five  royal  butlers,  the  com- 
mander of  archers  in  Nubia,  an  overseer  of  the  treasury, 
a  general  in  the  army  named  Peyes,  three  royal  scribes 
in  various  oflBces,  and  several  subordinate  officials. 

347.  At  the  critical  moment  the  king's  party  gained  full 
information  of  the  conspiracy,  and  the  people  involved 
in  the  treason  were  all  seized.  The  old  Pharaoh,  sorely 
shaken  by  the  ordeal,  and  possibly  suffering  bodily 
injury  from  attempted  assassination,  lived  to  appoint  a 
special  court  for  the  trial  of  the  conspirators  with  the 
most  impartial  justice.  Even  now  there  was  a  bold 
attempt  by  the  accused  to  influence  two  of  the  judges, 
who  were  guilty  of  such  indiscretion  that  they  were  tried 
and  condemned  to  lose  nose  and  ears.  The  trials  of  the 
conspirators  proceeded  with  regularity,  and  from  the 
records  of  three  different  prosecutions  we  are  able  to 
trace  the  conviction  of  thirty-two  oflacials  of  all  ranks, 
including  the  unhappy  young  pretender  himself. 
Meantime  the  thirty-second  anniversary  of  the  Phar- 
aoh's accession  was  celebrated  with  the  gorgeous  twenty 
days'  feast  customary  since  his  twenty-second  year. 
But  the  old  king  survived  only  twenty  days  more  and 
before  the  prosecution  of  his  would-be  assassins  was 
ended  he  passed  away  (1167  b.  c),  having  ruled  thirty- 
one  years  and  forty  days  (BAR,  IV,  361;  335;  413-415; 
416-456;  237). 


PART  VII 


THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT 
EGYPT 


XXIV 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  EMPIRE 

348.  The  death  of  Ramses  III  introduced  a  long  line 
of  nine  weaklings  all  of  whom  bore  the  great  name 
Ramses.  They  were  far  from  bearing  it  worthily,  and 
under  them  the  waning  power  of  the  Pharaohs  declined 
swiftly  to  its  fall  in  a  few  decades.  We  see  Ramses  IV, 
the  son  of  Ramses  III,  struggling  feebly  with  the  hope- 
less situation  which  he  inherited  about  1167  b.  c. 
Immediately  on  his  accession  the  new  king  prepared 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  documents  which  has 
reached  us  from  the  civilization  of  ancient  Egypt,  a 
huge  list  of  his  father's  good  works.  It  contained  an 
enormous  inventory  of  Ramses  Ill's  gifts  to  the  three 
chief  divinities  of  the  nation,  besides  a  statement  of  his 
achievements  in  war  and  of  his  benefactions  toward  the 
people  of  his  empire.  All  this  recorded  on  papyrus 
formed  a  huge  roll  one  hundred  and  thirty  feet  long, 
now  called  Papyrus  Harris,  the  largest  document  which 
has  descended  to  us  from  the  early  orient.  Accompanied 
by  this  extraordinary  statement  of  his  benefactions 
toward  gods  and  men,  Ramses  III  was  laid  in  his 
tomb.  In  its  efficacy  in  securing  him  unlimited  favour 
with  the  gods  there  could  be  no  doubt;  and  it  contained 
so  many  prayers  placed  in  the  mouth  of  Ramses  III  on 
behalf  of  his  son  and  successor,  that  the  gods,  unable 
to  resist  the  appeals  of  the  favourite  to  whom  they 

347 


348      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


owed  so  much,  would  certainly  grant  his  son  a  long 
reign.  Indeed  it  is  clear  that  to  this  motive  was  due  the 
production  of  the  document.  In  this  decadent  age  the 
Pharaoh  was  more  dependent  upon  such  means  for  the 
maintenance  of  his  power  than  upon  his  own  strong 
arm,  and  the  huge  papyrus  thus  becomes  a  significant 
sign  of  the  times.  With  fair  promises  of  a  long  reign 
the  insatiable  priesthoods  were  extorting  from  the 
impotent  Pharaoh  all  they  demanded,  while  he  was 
satisfied  with  the  assured  favour  of  the  gods  (BAR,  IV, 
151-412;  471). 

349.  Naturally  the  only  work  of  Ramses  IV,  of 
which  we  know,  is  an  enterprise  for  the  benefit  of  the 
gods,  involving  the  dispatch  of  nine  thousand  men  to 
secure  building  stone  from  the  quarries  of  Hammamat, 
which  he  himself  first  visited.  After  an  inglorious  reign 
of  six  years  he  was  succeeded  in  1161  b.  c.  by  the  fifth 
Ramses,  probably  his  son.  The  exploitation  of  the 
mines  of  Sinai  now  ceased,  and  the  last  Pharaonic  name 
found  there  is  that  of  Ramses  IV.  The  Empire  still 
maintained  by  Ramses  III  in  Asia  must  have  rapidly 
declined;  that  in  Nubia  was  still  maintained.  In 
quick  succession  these  feeble  Ramessids  now  followed 
each  other,  They  all  excavated  tombs  in  the  Valley 
of  the  Kings,  but  we  know  nothing  of  their  deeds.  Now 
and  again  the  obscurity  lifts,  and  we  catch  fleeting 
glimpses  of  a  great  state  tottering  to  its  fall  (BAR,  IV, 
457^85). 

350.  From  the  close  of  Ramses  Ill's  reign  to  the  first 
years  of  Ramses  IX,  only  some  twenty-five  or  thirty 
years  elapsed.  The  high  priesthood  of  Amon  which 
had  at  least  once  descended  from  father  to  son  in  the 
Nineteenth  Dynasty  had  since  become  permanently 
hereditary,  and  now  while  it  was  passing  from  the  hands 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


349 


of  Ramsesnakht  to  his  son  Amenhotep,  with  a  single 
transmission  of  authority,  six  feeble  Ramessids  suc- 
ceeded each  other,  with  ever  lessening  power  and 
prestige.  Meanwhile  Amenhotep,  the  High  Priest  of 
Amon,  flourished.  He  sumptuously  restored  the  refec- 
tory and  kitchen  of  the  priests  in  the  temple  of  his  god  at 
Karnak  built  eight  hundred  years  before  by  Sesostris  I. 
We  see  the  crafty  priest  manipulating  the  pliant  Pharaoh 
as  he  pleases,  and  obtaining  golden  decorations  and 
every  honour  at  his  hands.  The  days  when  such  dis- 
tinctions were  the  reward  of  valour  on  the  battle-fields 
of  Syria  are  long  passed;  and  skill  in  priest-craft  is  the 
surest  guarantee  of  preferment.  As  the  king  delivered 
the  rich  gifts  to  the  High  Priest  he  accompanied  them 
with  words  of  praise  such  that  one  is  in  doubt  whether 
they  are  delivered  by  the  sovereign  to  the  subject  or  by 
the  subject  to  his  lord.  All  these  honours  were  twice 
recorded  by  Amenhotep,  on  the  walls  of  the  Karnak 
temple,  in  a  large  relief  showing  Amenhotep  receiving 
his  gifts  from  the  king,  and  depicting  his  figure  in  the 
same  heroic  stature  as  that  of  the  king.  In  all  such  scenes 
from  time  immemorial  the  oflficial  appearing  before  the 
king  had  been  represented  as  a  pigmy  before  the  tower- 
ing figure  of  the  Pharaoh;  but  the  High  Priest  of  Amon 
was  now  rapidly  growing  to  measure  his  stature  with 
that  of  the  Pharaoh  himself,  both  on  the  temple  wall 
and  in  the  affairs  of  government  (BAR,  IV,  414  /.;  486- 
498). 

351.  The  state  of  disorganization  and  helplessness 
which  was  gradually  evolving  is  revealed  to  us  in  a 
chapter  from  the  government  of  the  Theban  necropolis, 
preserved  in  certain  legal  archives  of  Ramses  IX's 
reign.  Thebes,  forsaken  as  a  royal  residence  by  the 
Pharaohs  two  hundred  years  before,  was  now  rapidly 


350      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


declining,  but  it  continued  to  be  the  burial  place  of  all 
the  royal  dead.  In  the  lonely  valley  behind  the  western 
plain,  deep  in  the  heart  of  the  cliffs,  slept  the  great 
emperors,  decked  in  all  the  magnificence  which  the 
wealth  of  Asia  had  brought  them.  In  the  sixteenth  year 
of  Ramses  IX's  reign  the  royal  tombs  of  the  plain 
before  the  western  cliffs  were  found  to  have  been 
attacked  by  tomb  robbers.  Within  a  generation,  as 
the  work  of  plunder  continued,  all  the  bodies  of  Egypt's 
kings  and  emperors  buried  at  Thebes  were  despoiled, 
and  of  the  whole  line  of  Pharaohs  from  the  beginning 
of  the  Eighteenth  to  the  end  of  the  Twentieth  Dynasty, 
only  one  body,  that  of  Amenhotep  II,  has  been  found 
still  lying  in  its  sarcophagus;  although  it  had  by  no 
means  escaped  spoliation.  Thus,  while  the  tombs  of 
the  Egyptian  emperors  at  Thebes  were  being  ransacked 
and  their  bodies  rifled  and  dishonoured,  the  empire 
which  they  conquered  was  crumbling  to  final  ruin  (BAR, 
IV,  499-556). 

352.  At  the  accession  of  Ramses  XII  (1118  B.C.)  we 
are  able  to  discern  the  culmination  of  the  tendencies 
which  we  have  been  endeavouring  to  trace.  Before  he 
had  been  reigning  five  years  a  local  noble  at  Tanis 
named  Nesubenebded,  the  Smendes  of  the  Greeks,  had 
absorbed  the  entire  Delta  and  made  himself  king  of  the 
North.  There  was  now  nothing  for  the  impotent 
Pharaoh  to  do  but  retire  to  Thebes, — if  this  transfer  had 
not  indeed  already  occurred  before  this, — where  he  still 
maintained  his  precarious  throne.  Thebes  was  thus 
cut  off  from  the  sea  and  the  commerce  of  Asia  and 
Europe  by  a  hostile  kingdom  in  the  Delta,  and  its 
wealth  and  power  still  more  rapidly  declined.  The 
High  Priest  of  Amon  was  now  virtually  at  the  head  of  a 
Theban  principality,  which  we  shall  see  becoming 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


351 


gradually  more  and  more  a  distinct  political  unit. 
Together  with  this  powerful  priestly  rival,  the  Pharaoh 
continued  to  hold  Nubia  (BAR,  IV,  557;  581). 

353.  The  swift  decline  of  the  Ramessids  was  quickly 
noticed  and  understood  in  Syria  long  before  the  revolu- 
tion which  resulted  in  the  independence  of  the  Delta. 
The  Thekel  and  Peleset  (Philistines),  whose  invasion 
Ramses  III  had  for  a  time  halted,  as  we  have  before 
stated,  had  continued  to  arrive  in  Syria.  They  had 
moved  gradually  southward,  pushing  before  them  the 
Amorites  and  scattered  remnants  of  the  Hittites,  who 
were  thus  forced  southward  into  Palestine,  where  they 
were  found  later  by  the  Hebrews.  By  1115  B.C.  the 
Thekel  were  already  established  as  an  independent 
kingdom  at  Dor,  just  south  of  the  seaward  end  of  Car- 
mel.  As  we  do  not  find  them  mentioned  in  the  sur\4v- 
ing  records  of  the  Hebrews,  they  must  have  merged  into 
the  larger  mass  of  the  Philistines,  whose  cities  gradually 
extended  probably  from  Beth-Shean  in  the  Jordan 
valley  westward  and  southward,  through  the  plain  of 
Esdraelon  or  Megiddo  to  the  southern  sea-plain,  cutting 
off  the  northern  tribes  of  Israel  from  their  kinsmen  in 
the  south.  Continually  replenished  with  new  arrivals 
by  sea,  they  threatened  to  crush  Israel,  as  they  had  done 
the  kingdom  of  Amor,  before  the  Hebrew  tribal  leaders 
should  have  welded  the  Palestinian  Semites  into  a 
nation.  With  their  extreme  southern  frontier  at  the 
yery  gates  of  Eg}^pt,  these  hardy  and  warlike  wanderers 
from  Crete  and  the  far  north  could  not  have  paid 
tribute  to  the  Pharaoh  very  long  after  the  death  of 
Ramses  III  (1167  B.C.).  In  the  reign  of  Ramses  IX 
(1142-1123  B.C.),  or  about  that  time,  a  body  of  Egyp- 
tian envoys  were  detained  at  Byblos  by  the  local  dynast 
for  seventeen  years,  and,  unable  to  return,  they  at  last 


352      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


died  there.  The  Syrian  princes,  among  whom  Ramses 
III  had  won  his  victories,  were  thus  indifferent  to  the 
power  of  Egypt  within  tw^enty  or  twenty-five  years  of 
his  death  (BAR,  IV,  558;  585;  Jer.  XLVII,  4;  Amos, 
IX,  7), 

354.  A  few  years  later,  under  Ramses  XII,  these 
same  conditions  in  Syria  are  vividly  portrayed  in  the 
report  of  an  Egyptian  envoy  thither.  In  response  to 
an  oracle,  Wenamon,  the  envoy  in  question,  was  dis- 
patched to  Byblos,  at  the  foot  of  Lebanon,  to  procure 
cedar  for  the  sacred  barge  of  Amon.  Hrihor,  the  High 
Priest  of  Amon,  was  able  to  give  him  only  a  pitiful  sum 
in  gold  and  silver,  and  therefore  sent  with  him  an  image 
of  Amon,  called  "  Amon-of-the-Way who  was  able  to 
bestow  "life  and  health,"  hoping  thus  to  impress  the 
prince  of  Byblos  and  compensate  for  the  lack  of  liberal 
payment.  Nothing  more  eloquently  portrays  the  de- 
cadent condition  of  Egypt  than  the  humiliating  state 
of  this  unhappy  envoy,  dispatched  without  ships,  with 
no  credentials,  with  but  a  beggarly  pittance  to  offer  for 
the  timber  desired,  and  only  the  memory  of  Egypt's 
former  greatness  with  which  to  impress  the  prince  of 
Byblos.  Stopping  at  Dor  on  the  voyage  out,  Wenamon 
was  robbed  of  the  little  money  he  had,  and  was  unable 
to  secure  any  satisfaction  from  the  Thekel  prince  of  that 
city.  After  w^aiting  in  despair  for  nine  days,  he  de- 
parted for  Byblos  by  way  of  Tyre,  having  on  the  way 
somehow  succeeded  in  seizing  from  certain  Thekel 
people  a  bag  of  silver  as  security  for  his  loss  at  Dor. 
He  finally  arrived  in  safety  at  Byblos,  where  Zakar-Baal, 
the  prince  of  the  city,  would  not  even  receive  him,  but 
ordered  him  to  leave.  Such  was  the  state  of  an  Egyp- 
tian envoy  in  Phoenicia,  within  fifty  or  sixty  years  of 
the  death  of  Ramses  III.    Finally,  as  the  despairing 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


353 


Wenamon  was  about  to  take  passage  back  to  Egypt,  one 
of  the  noble  youths  in  attendance  upon  Zakar-Baal  was 
seized  with  a  divine  frenzy,  and  in  prophetic  ecstasy 
demanded  that  Wenamon  be  summoned,  honourably 
treated  and  dismissed.  This  earliest  known  example 
of  Old  Testament  prophecy  in  its  earliest  form  thus 
secured  for  Wenamon  an  interview  with  Zakar-Baal. 

355.  ^Miile  the  Phoenician  prince  quite  readily  ad- 
mits the  debt  of  culture  which  his  land  owes  Egypt  as  a 
source  of  civilization,  he  emphatically  repudiates  all 
political  responsibility  to  the  ruler  of  Egypt,  whom  he 
never  calls  Pharaoh,  except  in  referring  to  a  former 
sovereign.  The  situation  is  clear.  A  burst  of  military 
enthusiasm  and  a  line  of  able  rulers  had  enabled  Egypt 
to  assume  for  several  centuries  an  imperial  position, 
which  her  unwarlike  people  were  not  by  nature  adapted 
to  occupy;  and  their  impotent  descendants,  no  longer 
equal  to  their  imperial  role,  were  now  appealing  to  the 
days  of  splendour  with  an  almost  pathetic  futility.  It 
is  characteristic  of  the  time  that  this  appeal  should  as- 
sume a  religious  or  even  theological  form,  as  Wenamon 
boldly  proclaims  Amon's  dominion  over  Lebanon, 
where  the  Phoenician  princes  had,  only  two  generations 
before,  w^orshipped  and  paid  tribute  at  the  temple  of 
Amon,  erected  by  Ramses  III.  With  oracles  and  an 
image  of  the  god  that  conferred  **life  and  health"  the 
Egyptian  envoy  sought  to  make  his  bargain  with  the 
contemptuous  Phoenician  for  timber  which  a  Thutmose 
III  or  a  Seti  I  had  demanded  with  his  legions  behind 
him.  The  image  of  "  Amon-of-the-Way "  failed  to 
impress  Zakar-Baal,  as  the  Pharaoh's  armies  had  im- 
pressed his  ancestors;  and  it  was  only  when  Wenamon's 
messenger  to  Egypt  returned  with  a  few  vessels  of  silver 
and  gold,  some  fine  linen,  papyrus  rolls,  ox-hides,  coils 


354      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


of  cordage,  and  the  like,  that  the  Phoenician  ruler 
ordered  his  men  to  cut  the  desired  logs;  although  he 
had  sent  some  of  the  heavier  timbers  for  the  hull  of  the 
barge  in  advance,  as  an  evidence  of  his  good  faith. 
Having  escaped  from  a  fleet  of  eleven  Thekel  ships 
which  pursued  him,  the  barque  of  the  unhappy  Wena- 
mon  was  driven  by  a  tempest  from  the  homeward  course 
upon  the  coast  of  Cyprus,  where  the  populace  was  about 
to  slay  him  at  the  palace  of  Hatiba,  the  queen.  Her 
he  fortunately  intercepted  as  she  was  passing  from  one 
palace  to  another.  Among  her  following,  Wenamon, 
by  inquiry,  found  a  Cyprian  who  spoke  Egyptian,  and 
by  skillful  intercession  he  gained  her  protection.  At 
this  point  his  report  breaks  off,  and  the  conclusion  is 
lost;  but  here  again,  in  Cyprus,  whose  king,  as  practically 
his  vassal,  the  Pharaoh  had  been  wont  to  call  to  account 
for  piracy  in  the  old  days  of  splendour,  we  find  the 
representative  of  Egypt  barely  able  to  save  his  life  only 
two  generations  after  a  great  war-fleet  of  Ramses  III 
had  destroyed  the  powerful  united  navy  of  his  northern 
enemies  in  these  very  waters.  This  unique  and  in- 
structive report  of  Wenamon  (BxAR,  IV,  557  fj.), 
therefore,  reveals  to  us  the  complete  collapse  of  Egyptian 
prestige  abroad  and  shows  with  what  appalling  swift- 
ness the  dominant  state  in  the  Mediterranean  basin  had 
declined  under  the  weak  successors  of  Ramses  III. 
When  an  Assyrian  king,  presumably  Tiglath-pileser  I, 
appeared  in  the  West  about  1100  b.  c,  a  Pharaoh,  who 
was  probably  Nesubenebded,  feeling  his  exposed  position 
in  the  Delta,  deemed  it  wise  to  propitiate  the  Assyrian 
with  a  gift.  Thus  Egyptian  influence  in  Syria  had 
utterly  vanished,  while  in  Palestine  a  fiction  of  tradi- 
tional sovereignty,  totally  without  practical  political 
significance,  was  maintained  at  the  Pharaoh's  court 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  EMPIRE 


355 


In  resumption  of  that  sovereignty  we  shall  see  future 
kings  making  sporadic  campaigns  thither  after  the 
establishment  of  the  Hebrew  monarchy. 

356.  Meanwhile  there  was  but  one  possible  issue  for 
the  conditions  at  Thebes.  The  messenger  who  pro- 
cured the  timber  for  the  sacred  barge  of  Amon  was  no 
longer  dispatched  by  the  Pharaoh,  but  as  we  have  seen, 
by  the  High  Priest  of  Amon,  Hrihor.  He  has  now 
become  head  of  the  Pharaoh's  military  forces,  with  the 
title  commander  in  chief  of  the  armies  of  the  South  and 
North."  On  the  temples  there  are  now  two  dedications : 
the  usual  one  by  the  Pharaoh  and  another  by  the  High 
Priest;  while  in  the  temple  reliefs,  in  the  place  for 
thousands  of  years  occupied  by  the  Pharaoh,  stands  the 
High  Priest  Hrihor.  Like  the  shadowy  caliph;  whom 
the  Egyptian  sultans  brought  from  Bagdad  to  Cairo, 
and  maintained  for  a  time  there,  so  the  unfortunate 
Ramses  XH  had  been  brought  from  his  Delta  residence 
to  Thebes,  that  the  conventionalities  of  the  old  Pharaonic 
tradition  might  still  be  continued  for  a  brief  time.  A 
letter  written  to  his  Nubian  viceroy  in  his  seventeenth 
year  shows  that  he  still  retained  some  voice  in  Nubia; 
but  he  is  soon  deprived  of  his  authority  there  also,  and 
Hrihor  appears  as  ''viceroy  of  Kush."  Already  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Nineteenth  Dynasty  we  recall  that  Amon 
had  gained  possession  of  the  Nubian  gold-country;  the 
High  Priest  has  now  gone  a  step  further  and  seized  the 
whole  of  the  great  province  of  the  Upper  Nile.  The 
same  inscription  calls  him  also  "overseer  of  the  double 
granary,"  the  most  important  fiscal  oflScer  in  the  state, 
next  the  chief  treasurer  himself.  There  is  now  nothing 
left  in  the  way  of  authority  and  power  for  the  High 
Priest  to  absorb;  he  is  commander  of  all  the  armies, 
viceroy  of  Kush,  holds  the  treasury  in  his  hands,  and 


356      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


executes  the  buildings  of  the  gods.  When  the  fiction 
of  the  last  Ramessid's  official  existence  had  been  main- 
tained for  at  least  twenty-seven  years  the  High  Priest's 
supreme  position  seems  to  have  been  confirmed  by  an 
oracle  of  Khonsu,  followed  by  the  approval  of  Amon 
The  shadowy  Pharaoh  vanishes,  and  on  the  royal 
buildings  the  High  Priest's  name,  preceded  by  the 
Pharaonic  titles  and  enclosed  in  the  royal  cartouche  at 
'ast  appears  alone  (BAR,  IV,  592-594;  602;  609;  611; 
595-600;  640;  614-626).. 


XXV 


PRIESTS  AND  MERCENARIES:   THE  SUPREMACY  OF 
THE  LIBYANS 

357.  The  result  of  the  development  of  Thebes  into 
an  independent  sacerdotal  principality  was  not  only 
the  downfall  of  the  empire,  but  of  course  also  the  end 
of  the  unity  of  the  kingdom.  This  disunion  and  division 
continued  in  more  or  less  pronounced  form  from  the 
rise  of  Hrihor  and  Nesubenebded,  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  eleventh  century,  for  four  hundred  and  fifty  years 
or  more.  The  complacent  Hrihor  maintained  the 
fiction  of  a  united  "Two  Lands,''  of  which  he  called 
himself  the  lord,  as  if  he  really  ruled  them  both.  AYith 
amazing  mendacity  he  filled  his  titulary  with  references 
to  his  universal  power,  and  afiirmed  that  the  Syrian 
princes  bowed  down  every  day  to  his  might.  We  recall, 
however,  the  adventures  of  the  luckless  Wenamon 
among  them  (pp.  352  jj.).  The  state  which  Hrihor 
maintained  was  a  theocracy,  pure  and  simple.  As  far 
back  as  the  days  of  Thutmose  HI  there  are  remarkable 
examples  of  Amon's  intervention  in  the  affairs  of  govern- 
ment. Thutmose  HI  himself  was  crowned  by  an  oracle 
of  the  gods.  But  this  and  other  examples  of  the  god's 
intervention  occurred  on  extraordinary  occasions.  Un- 
der Hrihor's  theocracy  such  oracles  became  part  of 
the  ordinary  machinery  of  government.  ^Miatever  the 
High  Priest  wished  legally  to  effect  could  be  sanctioned 

357 


358      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


by  special  oracle  of  the  god  at  any  time,  and  by  prear- 
rangement  the  cultus  image  before  which  the  High 
Priest  made  known  his  desires  invariably  responded 
favourably  by  violent  nodding  of  the  head,  or  even  by 
speech.  All  wills  and  property  conveyances  of  members 
of  the  High  Priest's  family  were  oracles  of  Amon,  and 
civil  documents  thus  became  divine  decrees.  Banished 
political  exiles  were  recalled  by  oracle  of  the  god,  crim- 
inal cases  were  tried  before  him,  and  by  his  decision  the 
convicted  were  put  to  death.  Priestly  jugglery,  ruling 
if  necessary  in  utter  disregard  of  law  and  justice,  thus 
enabled  the  High  Priest  to  cloak  with  the  divine  sanction 
all  that  he  wished  to  effect  (BAR,  IV,  620;  623;  795; 
670-674). 

358.  Hrihor  must  have  been  an  old  man  at  his  ac- 
cession (1090  B.  c).  He  did  not  long  survive  Ramses 
Xn,  and  at  his  death  his  son,  Payonekh,  also  advanced 
in  years,  was  unable  to  maintain  the  independence  of 
Thebes  against  Nesubenebded  at  Tanis,  who  extended 
his  authority  over  the  whole  country  for  a  brief  time. 
He  is,  therefore,  called  the  first  king  of  the  Twenty-first 
Dynasty  by  Manetho,  who  knows  nothing  of  the  inde- 
pendence of  Thebes.  Payonekh's  son,  Paynozem  I, 
quickly  succeeded  him,  and  while  he  was  ruling  at 
Thebes  in  more  or  less  independence,  but  without  royal 
titles,  Nesubenebded  was  followed  at  Tanis  by  Pesib- 
khenno  I,  probably  his  son.  Paynozem  I  now  achieved 
a  master-stroke  of  diplomacy  and  gained  in  marriage  the 
daughter  of  the  Tanite,  Pesibkhenno  I.  Thus  on  the 
death  of  the  latter  (1067  b.  c),  he  obtained  through  his 
wife  the  Tanite  crown  and  the  sovereignty  over  a  united 
Egypt,  which  he  maintained  for  some  forty  years. 
Three  of  his  sons  became  high  priests  at  Thebes,  but 
not  without  disturbance.    These  Tanite  kings  were  not 


THE  SUPREMACY  OF  THE  LIBYANS  359 


great  builders,  although  Pesibkhenno  I  raised  a  massive 
enclosure  wall  eighty  feet  thick  around  his  temple  at 
Tanis.  As  they  show  little  initiative  in  other  directions, 
the  century  and  a  half  during  which  they  maintained 
themselves  was  one  of  steady  industrial  and  economic 
decline  (BAR,  IV,  627;  631;  633-635;  642;  650-658; 
661;  PT,  I,  19). 

359.  The  Tanites  as  a  whole  did  nothing  for  the  once 
great  capital  of  the  empire,  and  its  decline  was  steady 
and  rapid.  They  respected  the  memory  of  their  royal 
ancestors  and  vied  with  the  high  priests  at  Thebes  in 
protecting  the  bodies  of  the  emperors,  which  they 
hurried  from  place  to  place  to  conceal  them  from  the 
persistent  tomb-robbers.  Finally,  under  Pesibkhenno 
II,  the  last  king  of  the  Tanite  Dynasty,  they  were 
hurriedly  removed  to  their  final  hiding  place,  an  old 
and  probably  unused  tomb  of  Amenhotep  I,  near  the 
temple  of  Der  el-Bahri.  Here  the  greatest  kings  of 
Egypt  slept  unmolested  for  nearly  three  thousand  years, 
until  about  1871  or  1872,  when  the  Theban  descendants 
of  those  same  tomb-robbers  whose  prosecution  under 
Ramses  IX  we  can  still  read,  discovered  the  place  and 
the  plundering  of  the  royal  bodies  was  begun  again. 
In  1881,  by  methods  not  greatly  differing  from  those 
employed  under  Ramses  IX,  the  modern  authorities 
forced  the  thieves  to  disclose  the  place.  Thus  nearly 
twenty-nine  centuries  after  they  had  been  sealed  in  their 
hiding  place  by  the  ancient  scribes,  and  some  three 
thousand  five  hundred  years  after  the  first  interment  of 
the  earliest  among  them,  the  faces  of  Egypt's  kings  and 
emperors  were  disclosed  to  the  modern  world  (BAR,  IV, 
681;  627  y^.;  664-667;  691/.;  499-556). 

360.  Abroad,  the  Twenty-first  Dynasty  was  as  feeble 
as  its  predecessors  at  the  close  of  the  Twentieth  had 


360      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


been.  They  probably  maintained  Egyptian  power  in 
Nubia,  but  as  for  Asia,  there  was  only  the  court  fiction 
of  a  nominal  suzerainty  over  Palestine  in  continuance 
of  century-long  tradition.  During  this  period  of 
Egypt's  total  eclipse  the  tribes  of  Israel  were  given 
opportunity  to  consolidate  their  national  organization 
and  under  Saul  and  David  they  gradually  gained  the 
upper  hand  against  the  Philistines.  Egypt's  exact 
relation  to  these  events  it  is  as  yet  impossible  to 
determine,  as  we  have  no  contemporary  monuments. 
The  sea-peoples  no  longer  appear  upon  the  monuments, 
and  from  the  west,  the  Delta  was  now  the  peaceful 
conquest  of  the  Libyans,  who  accomplished  by  gradual 
immigration  what  they  had  failed  to  gain  by  hostile 
invasion.  Libyan  mercenaries  still  filled  the  ranks  of 
the  Egyptian  army,  and  the  commanders  of  the  Mes- 
wesh  in  control  of  the  fortresses  and  garrisons  of  the 
important  Delta  towns  soon  gained  positions  of  power. 
A  titleless  Tehen-Libyan  named  Buyuwawa  settled  at 
Heracleopolis  early  in  the  Twenty-first  Dynasty,  and 
the  family  slowly  rose  till  Sheshonk  the  seventh  de- 
scendant of  the  line  was  a  powerful  mercenary  prince 
at  Heracleopolis,  in  control  of  a  principality  reaching 
probably  as  far  as  Memphis  on  the  north  and  on  the 
south  as  far  as  Siut.  The  other  Libyan  commanders 
in  the  Delta  were  evidently  enjoying  similar  prosperity. 
Whether  the  Tanite  line  died  out  or  its  last  representa- 
tive was  too  feeble  to  maintain  himself  we  cannot  now 
discern,  but  such  was  the  power  of  Sheshonk  at  Hera- 
cleopolis that  he  now  transferred  his  residence  to  Bubas- 
tis  in  the  eastern  Delta,  where  he  seized  the  royal 
authority  and  proclaimed  himself  Pharaoh  about  945 
B.  c.  His  line  was  known  to  Manetho  as  the  Twenty- 
second  Dynasty.    Thus,  in  a  little  over  two  centuries 


THE  SUPREMACY  OF  THE  LIBYANS  361 


after  the  death  of  Ramses  III,  who  had  smitten  them 
so  sorely,  the  Libyans  gained  the  crown  of  Eg}"pt  with- 
out so  much  as  drawing  the  sword.  The  forces  which 
thus  placed  a  soldier  and  a  foreigner  upon  the  venerable 
throne  of  the  Pharaohs  had  developed  hand  in  hand 
with  those  which  had  delivered  the  countrv^to  the  priests; 
but  the  power  of  the  priest  had  culminated  a  little  more 
rapidly  than  that  of  the  mercenary,  although  both  were 
equally  rooted  in  the  imperial  system  of  the  Eighteenth 
Dynasty  (BAR,  IV,  785-793;  669-687;  785 

361.  Sheshonk  immediately  gave  to  the  succession 
of  his  line  a  legitimacy  which  he  could  not  himself 
possess,  by  marrying  his  son  to  the  daughter  of  Pesib- 
khenno  II,  the  last  of  the  Tanite  kings  of  the  Twenty- 
first  Dynasty.  A  difficult  situation  confronted  the  new 
ruler.  It  was  essentially  a  feudal  organization  which 
was  now  effected  by  Sheshonk  I,  and  the  princes  who 
owed  him  fealty  were  largely  the  turbulent  ]\Ieshwesh 
chiefs  like  himself,  who  would  naturally  not  forget  his 
origin  nor  fail  to  see  that  a  successful  coup  might  ac- 
complish for  any  one  of  them  what  he  had  achieved  for 
himself.  It  is  evident  that  they  ruled  the  Delta  cities, 
rendering  to  the  Pharaoh  their  quota  of  troops,  as  did 
the  Mamlukes  under  the  Sultans  of  Moslem  Egypt. 
Upper  Eg}'pt  was  organized  into  two  principalities; 
that  of  Heracleopolis  embracing,  as  we  have  seen, 
northern  Upper  Egypt  as  far  south  as  Siut,  where  the 
Theban  principality  began,  which  in  its  turn  included 
all  the  country  southward  to  the  cataract  and  perhaps 
Nubia  also.  The  country  thus  already  fell  into  three 
divisions  roughly  corresponding  to  those  of  Ptolemaic 
and  Roman  times.  Sheshonk  by  his  origin  controlled 
Heracleopolis,  and  he  and  his  family  after  him  main- 
tained close  relations  with  the  High  Priests  of  Ptah  at 


362      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


Memphis.  He  likewise  attempted  to  hold  the  support 
of  Thebes  to  his  house  by  appointing  his  own  son  as 
High  Priest  of  Amon  there;  but  it  still  remained  a 
distinct  principality,  capable  of  offering  serious  opposi- 
tion to  the  ruling  family  in  the  Delta.  The  city  itself 
at  least  was  not  taxable  by  the  Pharaoh,  and  was  never 
visited  by  his  fiscal  officials.  Under  these  circumstances 
an  outbreak  among  the  Libyan  lords  of  the  Delta  or  in 
the  two  powerful  principalities  of  the  South  might  be 
expected  as  soon  as  there  was  no  longer  over  them  a 
strong  hand  like  that  of  Sheshonk  I  (BAR,  IV,  738; 
745-747;  699  /.;  750). 

362.  Under  the  energetic  Sheshonk  Egypt's  foreign 
policy  took  on  a  more  aggressive  character,  and  her 
long  merely  formal  claims  upon  Palestine  were  prac- 
tically pressed.  Solomon  was  evidently  an  Egyptian 
vassal  who  possibly  received  in  marriage  a  daughter  of 
the  Pharaoh  and  whose  territory  his  Egyptian  suzerain 
extended  by  the  gift  of  the  important  city  of  Gezer, 
a  Canaanite  stronghold  unsubdued  by  the  Israelites, 
which  the  Pharaoh  now  captured,  burned,  and  pre- 
sented to  Solomon,  who  rebuilt  it.  The  Pharaoh  with 
whom  Solomon  had  to  deal  cannot  have  been  one  of  the 
degenerate  kings  at  the  close  of  the  Twenty-first  Dy- 
nasty, but  an  aggressive  ruler  who  resumed  Egypt's 
control  in  Palestine;  and  we  know  of  no  other  king  at 
this  time  who  answers  this  description  save  Sheshonk  I. 
After  the  division  of  the  kingdom  of  the  Hebrews  under 
Solomon's  son,  Rehoboam,  Sheshonk  I,  who  had  already 
harboured  the  fugitive  Jeroboam,  Rehoboam's  northern 
enemy,  thought  it  a  good  opportunity  to  make  his 
claims  in  Palestine  unquestionable,  and  in  the  fifth 
year  of  Rehoboam,  probably  about  926  b.  c,  he  invaded 
Palestine.    His  campaign  penetrated  no  further  north 


THE  SUPREMACY  OF  THE  LIBYANS  363 


than  the  Sea  of  Galilee  and  extended  eastward  probably 
as  far  as  Mahanaim  on  the  east  of  Jordan.  According 
to  the  Hebrew  records,  the  Egyptians  also  entered 
Jerusalem  and  despoiled  it  of  the  wealth  gathered  there 
in  Solomon's  day;  but  it  is  clear  that  Sheshonk's 
campaign  was  directed  impartially  against  the  two 
kingdoms  and  did  not  affect  Judah  alone.  Among 
other  Palestinian  towns  which  Sheshonk  records  as 
taken  by  him  is  a  place  called  "Field  of  Abram,"  in 
which  we  find  the  earliest  occurrence  of  the  name  of 
Israel's  patriarchal  hero.  Sheshonk  was  able  to  return 
with  great  plunder  to  replenish  the  long  depleted 
Pharaonic  coffers.  He  placed  a  record  of  the  tribute 
of  Palestine  and  of  Nubia,  of  which  he  had  now  gained 
control,  beside  those  of  the  great  conquerors  of  the 
Empire  on  the  walls  of  the  Karnak  temple  at  Thebes, 
Thus  for  a  time  at  least  the  glories  of  the  Empire  of  the 
Nineteenth  Dynasty  were  restored  with  tribute  flowing 
into  the  treasury  from  a  domain  extending  from  northern 
Palestine  to  the  upper  Nile,  and  from  the  oases  to  the 
Red  Sea  (BAR,  IV,  750;  709-722;  723-724  A;  782- 
784;  I  Kings  IX,  15-17;  Ibid.,  XIV,  25;  AJSL,  XXI, 
22-36). 

363.  With  his  treasury  thus  replenished  Sheshonk 
was  able  to  revive  the  customary  building  enterprises 
of  the  Pharaohs  which  had  been  discontinued  for  over 
two  hundred  years.  He  beautified  Bubastis,  his  Delta 
residence,  and  at  Thebes  undertook  a  vast  court  before 
the  Karnak  temple.  By  its  south  gate,  now  known  as 
the  "Bubastite  Portal,"  the  Pharaoh  had  executed  a 
huge  relief  in  the  old  style,  depicting  himself  smiting 
the  Asiatics  before  Amon,  who  leads  and  presents  to 
Sheshonk  one  hundred  and  fifty-six  Palestinian  pris- 
oners, each  symbolizing  a  town  or  locality  captured  by 


3G4      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


Sheshonk  and  bearing  its  name.  A  number  of  Biblical 
names  may  here  be  recognized  (BAR,  IV,  709-722). 

364.  The  Libyan  rulers  who  succeeded  Sheshonk  1 
were  completely  Egyptianized,  though  they  retained 
their  Libyan  names.  When  Osorkon  I,  Sheshonk  Fs 
son  and  heir,  followed  him,  probably  about  920  B.  c  , 
he  succeeded  by  right  of  inheritance  through  his  wife, 
the  daughter  of  Pesibkhenno  II.  He  inherited  a  pros- 
perous kingdom  and  enormous  wealth,  but  Thebes, 
as  in  the  Twenty-first  Dynasty,  caused  great  friction, 
and  the  problem  was  not  solved  by  the  appointment  of 
the  Pharaoh's  son  as  High  Priest  there.  The  declining 
fortunes  of  the  Twenty-second  Dynasty  can  only  be 
dimly  discerned  in  the  career  of  the  Theban  principality, 
which,  however,  clearly  exhibits  the  turbulent  and 
restless  character  of  the  feudal  princes  who  now  make 
up  the  state.  We  see  the  High  Priest  driven  from 
Thebes  in  a  civil  war  lasting  many  years,  and  these 
events  are  such  as  filled  the  reigns  of  the  last  three 
Bubastites,  who  continued  to  hold  Thebes  and  ruled 
for  a  hundred  years;  although  their  city  of  Bubastis  has 
perished  so  completely  that  little  or  no  record  of  their 
careers  has  survived.  To  revolt  must  be  added  hostili- 
ties between  the  two  principalities  of  Thebes  and 
Heracleopolis,  of  which  there  are  plain  traces,  and  feuds 
among  the  mercenary  lords  of  the  Delta.  The  situation 
will  have  closely  resembled  that  under  the  Mamlukes, 
when  the  people,  groaning  under  every  oppression  and 
especially  exorbitant  taxation,  often  successively  taxed 
by  two  different  lords,  rose  in  revolt  after  revolt,  only 
to  be  put  down  by  the  mercenaries  with  slaughter  and 
rapine.  Under  such  circumstances  the  Pharaoh's 
influence  in  Palestine  must  have  totally  vanished;  but, 
alarmed  at  the  growing  power  of  Nineveh  in  Syria,  one 


THE  SUPREMACY  OF  THE  LIBYANS  365 


of  the  Bubastites,  probably  Takelot  II,  contributed  a 
quota  of  a  thousand  men  to  the  western  coalition  against 
the  Assyrians,  which  was  defeated  by  Shalmaneser  II 
at  Qarqar  on  the  Orontes  in  854  B.  c.  (BAR,  IV,  729- 
792). 

365.  It  is  impossible  to  determine  with  certainty  the 
family  connection  of  the  last  three  Bubastites.  They 
held  Memphis  and  Thebes,  and  their  names  occasionally 
appear  here  and  there  on  minor  monuments.  It  is 
evident  that  during  their  rule  the  local  lords  and 
dynasts  of  the  Delta  were  gradually  gaining  their 
independence,  and  probably  many  of  them  had  thrown 
off  their  allegiance  to  the  Bubastite  house  long  before 
the  death  of  Sheshonk  IV  (745  b.  c),  with  whom  the 
Twenty-second  Dynasty  certainly  reached  its  end. 

366.  One  of  these  Delta  lords,  named  Pedibast, 
gained  the  dominant  position  among  his  rivals  at  the 
death  of  Sheshonk  IV,  and  founded  a  new  house  known 
to  Manetho  as  the  Twenty-third  Dynasty.  ]Manetho 
places  this  dynasty  at  Tanis,  but  Pedibast  was  of  Buba- 
stite origin,  like  the  family  which  he  unseated.  A  late 
Demotic  papyrus  in  Vienna  contains  a  folk-tale  of 
long  feudal  strife,  which  significantly  reveals  the  un- 
settled conditions  of  the  time  among  the  turbulent 
dynasts,  whom  Pedibast  was  unable  to  control.  Under 
his  successor,  Osorkon  III,  conditions  were  no  better, 
until  there  was  at  last  an  independent  lord  or  petty  king 
in  every  city  of  the  Delta  and  up  the  river  as  far  as 
Hermopolis.  We  are  acquainted  with  the  names  of 
eighteen  of  these  dynasts,  whose  struggles  among  them- 
selves now  led  to  the  total  dissolution  of  the  Egyptian 
state.  Its  power  was  completely  paralyzed  and  the 
political  sagacity  of  such  statesmen  as  the  Hebrew 
prophets  was  quite  sufficient  to  perceive  how  utterh 


3G6      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


futile  was  the  policy  of  the  Egyptian  party  in  Israel, 
which  would  have  depended  upon  the  support  of  Egypt 
against  the  oppression  of  Assyria.  When  the  troops 
of  Tiglath-pileser  III  devastated  the  West  down  to  the 
frontier  of  Egypt  in  734-732  B.C.,  the  kinglets  of  the 
Delta  were  too  involved  in  their  own  complicated  and 
petty  wars  to  render  the  wretched  Hebrews  any  assist- 
ance; nor  did  they  foresee  that  the  day  must  soon  come 
when  the  great  power  on  the  Tigris  would  cross  the 
desert  that  separated  Egypt  from  Palestine  and  for  a 
brief  time  absorb  the  ancient  kingdom  of  the  Nile. 
But  before  this  inevitable  catastrophe  should  occur, 
another  foreign  power  was  to  possess  the  throne  of  the 
Pharaohs  (BAR,  IV,  794;  878;  796  830,  No.  2; 
WZKM,  XVII;  MSPER,  VI,  19  fj,). 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SUPREMACY  AND  THE  TRIUMPH 
OF  ASSYRIA. 

367.  Lower  Xubia  had  now  been  dominated  bv  the 
Egyptians  for  over  eighteen  hundred  years,  while  the 
country  above  the  second  cataract  to  the  region  of  the 
fourth  cataract  had  for  the  most  part  been  under 
Egyptian  control  for  something  like  a  thousand  years. 
The  fertile  and  productive  lands  below  the  fourth 
cataract,  the  rich  gold  mines  in  the  mountains  east  of 
Lower  Nubia,  which  compensated  in  some  measure  for 
its  agricultural  poverty,  and  the  active  trade  from  the 
Sudan  which  was  constantly  passing  through  the 
country,  made  it  a  land  of  resources  and  possibilities, 
which  the  Egyptianized  Nubians,  slowly  awakening  to 
their  birthright,  were  now  beginning  to  realize. 

368.  Shehonk  I  had  still  held  Nubia,  and  it  is  probable 
that  the  cataract  country  was  still  a  dependency  of 
Eg}'pt  until  the  middle  of  the  Twenty-second  Dynasty, 
about  850  b.  c.  It  will  be  recalled  that  Nubia  had  for 
five  centuries  been  very  closely  connected  with  Thebes 
and  the  temple  of  Amon.  The  control  of  the  Theban 
High  Priest  had  finally  strengthened  into  full  possession 
of  Nubia  for  two  hundred  and  fifty  years.  It  must  have 
been  the  Theban  priesthood,  perhaps  as  political  exiles, 
who  founded  the  Amonite  theocracy  which  now,  as  a 
fully  developed  Nubian  kingdom  emerges  upon  ou^ 

367 


368      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


view,  with  its  seat  of  government  at  Napata,  just  below 
the  fourth  cataract.  Napata  had  been  an  Egyptian 
frontier  station  from  the  days  of  Amenhotep  II,  seven 
hundred  years  earUer.  It  was,  moreover,  the  remotest 
point  in  Egyptian  Nubia,  and  hence  safest  from  attack 
from  the  North  (BAR,  IV,  796;  614  /.;  Ill,  640). 

369.  The  state  which  arose  here  was,  in  accordance 
with  our  explanation  of  its  origin,  a  reproduction  of  the 
Amonite  theocracy  at  Thebes.  The  state  god  was 
Amon,  and  he  continually  intervened  directly  in  the 
affairs  of  government  by  specific  oracles.  The  king 
bore  all  the  Pharaonic  titles,  calling  himself  Lord  of  the 
Two  Lands  as  if  he  governed  all  Egypt.  He  built 
temples  of  Egyptian  architecture,  decorated  with 
Egyptian  reliefs  and  bearing  hieroglyphic  inscriptions 
and  dedications  of  the  traditional  Egyptian  form. 

370.  By  721  b.  c.  we  suddenly  find  the  Nubian  king 
Piankhi,  then  over  twenty  years  upon  the  throne,  in 
possession  of  Upper  Egypt  as  far  north  as  Heracleopolis, 
just  south  of  the  Fayum,  with  Nubian  garrisons  in  the 
more  important  towns.  At  this  time  the  Twenty-third 
Dynasty,  represented  by  Osorkon  III  at  Bubastis,  no 
longer  actually  ruling  more  than  the  district  of  Bubastis 
and  surrounded  by  rivals  in  every  important  town  of  the 
Delta,  was  confronted  by  an  aggressive  and  powerful 
opponent  in  Tefnakhte,  the  dynast  of  Sais,  in  the 
western  Delta.  This  Saite  had  subdued  all  his  neigh- 
bours in  the  western  Delta,  and  beginning  the  absorp- 
tion of  upper  Egypt  had  already  captured  Hermopolis. 
Piankhi  sent  an  army  against  him,  which  drove  him 
back  into  the  Delta  and  began  the  siege  of  Hermopolis. 
Several  months  later  Piankhi  himself  reached  Hermop- 
olis with  reinforcements  and  vigorously  pushed  the 
siege,  soon  forcing  the  surrender  of  the  place. 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SUPREMACY 


369 


371.  The  advance  to  the  Deka,  saiKng  down  the 
Bahr  Yusiif,  was  then  begun,  and  the  chief  towns  of  the 
west  side  surrendered  one  after  another  on  seeing 
Piankhi's  force.  The  Nubian  king  offered  sacrifice 
to  the  gods  in  all  the  cities  which  he  passed,  and  took 
possession  of  all  the  available  property  for  his  own 
treasury  and  the  estate  of  Amon.  On  reaching  Mem- 
phis it  was  found  to  have  been  very  strongly  fortified 
by  Tefnakhte,  who  exhorted  the  garrison  to  rely  on  their 
strong  walls,  their  plentiful  supplies  and  the  high  water, 
which  protected  the  east  side  from  attack,  while  he  rode 
away  northward  for  reinforcements.  Having  landed 
on  the  north  of  the  city,  Piankhi,  surprised  at  the 
strength  of  the  place,  devised  a  shrewd  plan  of  assault, 
which  speaks  highly  for  his  skill  as  a  strategist.  The 
high  walls  on  the  west  of  the  city  had  been  recently 
raised  still  higher,  and  it  was  evident  that  the  east  side, 
protected  by  waters  perhaps  artificially  raised,  was 
being  neglected.  Here  was  the  harbour,  where  the 
ships  now  floated  so  high  that  their  bow  ropes  were 
fastened  among  the  houses  of  the  city.  Piankhi  sent 
his  fleet  against  the  harbour  and  quickly  captured  all 
the  shipping.  Then,  taking  command  in  person,  he 
rapidly  ranged  the  captured  craft  together  with  his  own 
fleet  along  the  eastern  walls,  thus  furnishing  footing 
for  his  assaulting  lines,  which  he  immediately  sent  over 
the  ramparts  and  captured  the  city  before  its  eastern 
defenses  could  be  strengthened  against  him. 

372.  The  entire  region  of  ^Memphis  then  submitted, 
whereupon  the  Delta  dynasts  also  appeared  in  numbers 
with  gifts  for  Piankhi  and  signified  their  submission. 
Piankhi  now  crossed  the  river  and  followed  the  old 
sacred  road  to  Heliopolis,  where  he  camped  by  the 
harbour.    His  annals  narrate  at  length  how  he  entered 


370      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


the  holy  of  hoHes  of  the  sun-god  here,  that  he  might  be 
recognized  as  his  son  and  heir  to  the  throne  of  Egypt, 
according  to  custom  since  the  remote  days  of  the  Fifth 
Dynasty.  Here  king  Osorkon  III  of  the  Twenty-third 
Dynasty  at  Bubastis,  now  but  a  petty  dynast  Hke  the 
rest,  visited  Piankhi  and  recognized  the  Nubian^s 
suzerainty.  Having  then  moved  his  camp  to  a  point 
just  east  of  Athribis,  Piankhi  there  received  the  sub- 
mission of  the  principal  Delta  lords,  fifteen  in  number. 

373.  Meantime  the  desperate  Tefnakhte,  having  been 
driven  from  his  last  fortress,  had  taken  refuge  on  one  of 
the  remote  islands  in  the  western  mouths  of  the  Nile. 
Many  miles  of  vast  Delta  morass  and  a  network  of 
irrigation  canals  separated  Piankhi  from  the  fugitive. 
It  would  have  been  a  hazardous  undertaking  to  dispatch 
an  army  into  such  a  region.  When,  therefore,  Tef- 
nakhte sent  gifts  and  an  humble  message  of  submission 
requesting  that  Piankhi  send  to  him  a  messenger  with 
whom  he  might  go  to  a  neighbouring  temple  and  take 
the  oath  of  allegiance  to  his  Nubian  suzerain,  Piankhi 
was  very  glad  to  accept  the  proposal.  This  done,  a 
Nubian  Pharaoh  had  obtained  complete  recognition, 
had  supplanted  the  Libyans  and  was  lord  of  all  Egypt. 

374.  When  his  Delta  vassals  had  paid  Piankhi  a  last 
visit  he  loaded  his  ships  with  the  wealth  of  the  North  and 
sailed  away  for  his  southern  capital  amid  the  acclama- 
tions of  the  people.  Arrived  at  Napata,  Piankhi 
erected  in  the  temple  of  Amon  a  magnificent  granite 
stela,  inscribed  on  all  four  sides,  recording  in  detail  the 
entire  campaign.  It  is  the  clearest  and  most  rational 
account  of  a  military  expedition  which  has  survived 
from  ancient  Egypt.  It  is  this  document  of  course 
which  has  enabled  us  to  follow  Piankhi  in  his  conquest 
of  the  North  (BAR,  IV,  796-883). 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SUPREMACY 


371 


375.  Tefnakhte,  while  he  had  nominally  submitted 
to  Piankhi,  only  awaited  the  withdrawal  of  the  Ethiopian 
to  resume  his  designs.  He  eventually  succeeded  in 
establishing  a  kingdom  of  Lower  Egypt,  assumed  the 
Pharaonic  titles  and  ruled  at  least  eight  years  over  a 
feudal  state  like  that  of  the  Twenty-second  Dynasty. 
His  reign  is  parallel  with  the  last  years  of  the  Twenty- 
third  Dynasty,  which  seems  to  have  struggled  on  at 
Bubastis  as  vassal  princes  under  him.  In  Upper  Egypt, 
Piankhi  controlled  Thebes  long  enough  to  do  some 
slight  building  in  the  temple  of  Mut.  In  order  to  gain 
control  of  the  fortune  of  Amon  with  an  appearance  of 
legitimacy,  Piankhi  had  caused  his  sister-wife,  Amenar- 
dis,  to  be  adopted  by  Shepnupet,  the  daughter  of 
Osorkon  III,  who  was  sacerdotal  princess  of  Thebes. 
The  device  was  probably  not  new.  But  as  Piankhi 
withdrew,  the  decadent  Twenty-third  Dynasty  put  forth 
its  last  expiring  effort  and  established  an  ephemeral 
authority  in  Thebes.  Piankhi's  invasion  of  Egypt  and 
entire  reign  there  seem  therefore  to  have  fallen  within 
the  reign  of  Osorkon  III.  But  the  rising  power  of  Sais 
soon  overwhelmed  the  failing  Bubastites,  and  Bocchoris, 
son  of  Tefnakhte  of  Sais,  gained  the  throne  of  Lower 
Egypt  probably  about  718  B.C.,  to  be  later  known  as 
the  founder,  and  in  so  far  as  we  know,  the  sole  king  of 
the  Twenty-fourth  Dynasty.  The  monuments  of  his 
brief  reign  have  perished.  A  doubtless  reliable  tradi- 
tion of  Greek  times  makes  him  a  wise  lawgiver,  and  a 
remarkable  Demotic  papyrus  dated,  in  the  thirty-fourth 
year  of  the  Roman  Emperor  Augustus,  narrates  the 
prophecies  of  a  lamb  uttered  in  the  sixth  year  of  Boc- 
choris, in  which  the  imminent  invasion  of  Egypt  and  its 
conquest  by  the  Assyrians  are  foretold,  seemingly  with 
the  assurance  that  the  misfortunes  of  the  unhappy 


372      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


country  should  continue  nine  hundred  years.  It  is 
the  last  example  of  that  school  of  prophetic  literature  of 
which  Ipuwer  of  the  Middle  Kingdom  (p.  168)  was 
the  earliest  representative  known  to  us.  Manetho 
characteristically  narrates  this  marvellous  tale  as  an 
important  occurrence  of  Bocchoris's  reign  (BAR,  IV, 
811;  940;  KFB). 

376.  Egypt  had  now  been  under  the  divided  authority 
of  numerous  local  dynasts  for  probably  over  a  century 
and  a  half.  With  its  vast  works  of  irrigation  slowly 
going  to  ruin,  its  roads  unprotected,  intercourse  between 
cities  unsafe  and  the  larger  communities  suffering  from 
constant  turmoil  and  agitation,  the  productive  capacity 
of  the  country  was  steadily  weaning,  while  foreign  com- 
merce disappeared.  The  hopeless  state  of  the  country 
was  clearly  understood  by  the  sagacious  Isaiah,  who 
declared  to  his  people :  "  Behold  the  Lord  rideth  upon  a 
swift  cloud  and  cometh  unto  Egypt;  and  the  idols  of 
Egypt  shall  be  moved  at  his  presence,  and  the  heart  of 
Egypt  shall  melt  in  the  midst  of  it.  And  I  will  stir  up 
the  Egyptians  against  the  Egyptians;  and  they  shall 
fight  every  one  against  his  brother,  and  every  one  against 
his  neighbour;  city  against  city  and  kingdom  against 
kingdom.  .  .  .  And  I  will  give  over  the  Egyptians  into 
the  hand  of  a  cruel  lord;  and  a  fierce  king  shall  rule 
over  them,  saith  the  Lord,  the  Lord  of  Hosts.  .  .  .  The 
princes  of  Zoan  [Tanis]  are  utterly  foolish;  the  counsel 
of  the  wisest  counsellors  of  Pharaoh  is  become  brutish. 
.  .  .  The  princes  of  Zoan  are  become  fools,  the  princes 
of  Noph  [Napata?]  are  deceived;  they  have  caused 
Egypt  to  go  astray  that  are  the  corner  stone  of  her 
tribes.  The  Lord  hath  mingled  a  spirit  of  perverseness 
in  the  midst  of  her;  they  have  caused  Egypt  to  go  astray 
in  every  work  thereof,  as  a  drunken  man  staggering  in 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SUPREMACY 


S73 


his  vomit.  Neither  shall  there  be  for  Egypt  any  work 
which  head  or  tail,  palm-branch  or  rush,  may  do'* 
(Is.  XIX).  Xo  truer  picture  could  possibly  be  por- 
trayed. 

377.  Meantime  profound  political  changes,  fraught 
with  the  greatest  danger  to  Egypt,  were  taking  place  in 
Asia.  Twice  already  had  the  westward  march  of 
Assyria  disquieted  the  Pharaoh  (pp.  354, 366,).  Rousing 
Assyria  from  a  period  of  temporary  decadence,  Tiglath- 
pileser  III  had  brought  her  full  power  to  bear  upon  the 
West,  and  in  734  to  732  b.  c.  had  ravaged  Syria-Pales- 
tine to  the  very  borders  of  Eg^^pt.  The  Aramaean 
kingdom  of  Damascus  fell  and  the  whole  west  was 
organized  as  dependencies  of  Assyria.  In  the  short 
reign  of  Shalmaneser  IV,  who  followed  Tiglath-pileser 
III,  Israel  with  others  was  encouraged  to  revolt  by 
Sewe  or  So,  probably  an  otherw^ise  unknoTSTi  Delta 
dynast.  Before  the  Assyrian  invasion  which  resulted, 
Samaria  held  out  for  some  years;  but  under  Shal- 
maneser IV's  great  successor,  Sargon  II,  it  fell  in  722 
B.  c.  The  chief  families  of  Israel  w^ere  deported  and 
the  nation,  as  such,  was  annihiliated.  Unable  to  oppose 
the  formidable  armies  of  Assyria,  the  petty  kinglets  of 
Egypt,  constantly  fomented  discontent  and  revolt  among 
the  Syro-Palestinian  states  in  order  if  possible  to  create 
a  fringe  of  buffer  states  between  them  and  the  Assyrian. 
In  720  B.  c.  Sargon  again  appeared  in  the  west  to  sup- 
press a  revolt  in  which  Egypt  doubtless  had  a  hand. 
Completely  victorious  in  the  north,  he  marched  south- 
ward to  Raphia,  where  he  totally  defeated  the  allies 
of  the  south,  among  whom  Egypt  had  a  levy  of  troops 
under  a  commander  named  Sib'i.  The  Assyrian  hosts 
had  now  twice  swept  dowTi  to  the  very  borders  of 
Egypt,  and  the  dynasts  must  by  this  time  have  been  fully 


374      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


aware  of  their  danger.  In  715  B.C.  Sargon^s  records 
report  the  reception  of  gifts  from  Pir*u  (Pharaoh)  of 
Egypt,  who  will  probably  have  been  Bocchoris  (II 
Kings,  XVII,  4;  WUAG,  93  /.). 

378.  Such  was  the  threatening  situation  of  Egypt 
when,  probably  about  711  B.C.,  after  an  interval  of 
some  ten  years  since  the  retirement  of  Piankhi,  the 
Nubian  kings  again  appeared  in  the  North.  Piankhi 
had  now  been  succeeded  by  his  brother,  Shabaka,  with 
whom  the  uninterrupted  series  of  pure  Ethiopian  royal 
names  begins.  We  possess  no  native  records  of  his 
conquest  of  the  country,  but  Manetho  states  that  he 
burned  Bocchoris  alive.  Lower  Egypt  was  completely 
subdued,  Ethiopian  supremacy  acknowledged  and 
Shabaka  entrenched  himself  so  firmly  that  he  became 
the  founder  of  the  Twenty-fifth  or  Ethiopian  Dynasty, 
as  reported  by  Manetho.  Appreciating  the  serious 
danger  of  Assyria's  presence  on  his  very  borders, 
Shabaka  immediately  sent  his  agents  among  the  Syro- 
Palestinian  states  to  excite  them  to  revolt.  In  Philistia, 
Judah,  ]\Ioab  and  Edom  he  promised  the  vassals  of 
Assyria  support  in  rebellion  against  their  Ninevite 
suzerain.  Remembering  the  ancient  supremacy  of 
Egypt,  failing  to  understand  the  state  of  decadent 
impotence  into  which  she  had  fallen,  and  anxious  to 
shake  off  the  oppressive  Assyrian  yoke,  they  lent  a 
ready  ear  to  the  emissaries  of  Shabaka.  Only  in 
Judah  did  the  prophet-statesman,  Isaiah,  foresee  the 
futility  of  depending  upon  Egypt,  and  the  final  catas- 
trophe which  should  overtake  her  at  the  hands  of 
Assyria.  The  vigilant  Assyrian,  however,  hearing  of 
the  projected  alliance,  acted  so  quickly  that  the  con- 
spirators were  glad  to  drop  their  designs  and  protest 
fidelity.    In  spite  of  difficulties  in  Babylon  and  rebel- 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SUPREMACY  375 

lions  in  the  north,  the  able  and  aggressive  Sargon 
pushed  the  consolidation  of  his  power  with  brilliant 
success  and  left  to  his  son  Sennacherib  in  705  B.C. 
the  first  stable  and  firmly  compacted  empire  ever 
founded  by  a  Semitic  power  (Is.,  XX;  WUAG;  BAR, 
IV,  920).  " 

379.  Sennacherib  was  embarrassed  in  his  earlier 
years  with  the  usual  complications  in  Babylon.  Mar- 
dukbaliddin  (Merodach-baladan),  an  able  and  active 
claimant  of  the  Babylonian  throne,  w^ho  had  already 
caused  Sennacherib's  father  much  trouble,  now  sent  his 
emissaries  to  stir  up  defection  and  create  a  diversion 
in  his  favour  in  the  west.  As  a  result  Luli,  the  energetic 
king  of  T}Te,  Hezekiah  of  Judah,  the  djTiasts  of  Edom, 
]\Ioab  and  Ammon,  with  the  chiefs  of  their  Beduin 
neighbours,  in  fact,  all  the  southern  half  of  the  Assyrian 
conquests  in  the  west  besides  Eg}^t  were  finally  organ- 
ized in  a  great  alliance  against  Nineveh.  Before  the 
allies  could  act  in  concert,  Sennacherib  suddenly  ap- 
peared in  the  w^st,  marched  down  the  Phoenician  coast, 
capturing  all  its  strongholds  save  Tyre;  and  pressed  on 
southward  to  the  revolting  Philistine  cities.  Here, 
having  punished  Askalon,  he  advanced  to  Altaqu, 
where  he  came  upon  the  motley  army  gathered  by  the 
tardy  Shabaka  among  his  northern  vassals,  whom 
Sennacherib  calls  "the  Kings  of  Mu9ri"  (Eg}'pt). 
We  know  nothing  of  the  strength  of  this  force,  although 
Sennacherib  claims  that  they  were  "without  number;" 
but  it  is  safe  to  conclude  that  it  was  not  a  formidable 
army.  A  loose  aggregation  of  levies  from  the  domains 
of  the  local  Delta  princes  was  little  fitted  to  meet  the 
compact  and  finely  organized  armies  which  the  Assyrian 
kings  had  gradually  developed,  till  they  had  become  the 
dread  and  terror  of  the  west.    Although  small  Egyptian 


376      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


contingents  had  before  served  as  auxiliaries  against  the 
Ac  /rians,  the  armies  of  the  two  empires  on  the  Nile 
and  the  Tigris  had  never  before  faced  each  other. 
Sennacherib  led  his  own  power  in  person  while  the 
Egyptian  army  was  entrusted  by  Shabaka  to  his  nephew, 
a  son  of  Piankhi,  named  Taharka,  who  some  thirteen 
or  fourteen  years  afterward  became  king  of  Ethiopia,  a 
fact  which  led  the  Hebrew  annalist  to  give  him  that  title 
already  at  the  time  of  this  campaign.  There  was  but 
one  possible  issue  for  the  battle;  Sennacherib  disposed 
of  Taharka's  army  without  difficulty,  having  meanwhile 
beleaguered  Jerusalem  and  devastated  Judah  far  and 
wide.  He  had  effectually  stamped  out  the  disaffection 
in  the  west  and  completely  discomfited  the  allies,  but 
before  he  could  take  Jerusalem  the  plague-infected 
winds  from  the  malarial  shores  east  of  the  Delta  had 
scattered  death  among  his  troops.  This  overwhelming 
catastrophe,  together  with  disquieting  news  from  Baby- 
lon, forced  him  hastily  to  retire  to  Nineveh,  thus  bring- 
ing to  Jerusalem  the  deliverance  promised  by  Isaiah,  an 
event  in  which  pious  tradition  afterward  saw  the  de- 
stroying angel  of  the  Lord.  This  deliverance  was  per- 
haps as  fortunate  for  Egypt  as  for  Jerusalem.  For  the 
third  time  the  invincible  Assyrian  army  had  stood  on 
the  very  threshold  of  Egypt,  and  still  the  decrepit  nation 
on  the  Nile  for  a  little  time  was  spared  the  inevitable 
humiliation  which  was  now  so  near.  The  Syro- 
Palestinian  princes,  however,  were  so  thoroughly 
cowed  that  Egypt  was  thenceforth  unable  to  seduce 
them  to  rebellion.  Like  the  Hebrews,  they  at  last 
recognized  the  truth,  as  mockingly  stated  by  the  officers 
of  Sennacherib  to  the  unhappy  ambassadors  of  Jeru- 
salem: "Now  behold,  thou  trustest  upon  the  staff  of 
this  bruised  reed,  even  upon  Egypt;  whereon  if  a  man 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SUPREMACY 


377 


lean  it  will  go  into  his  hand  and  pierce  it;  so  is  Pharaoh 
king  of  Eg^'pt  unto  all  that  trust  on  him"  (Note  VIII; 
BAR,  IV,  892;  2  Kings,  XIX,  9;  XVIII,  21). 

380.  Shabaka  apparently  ruled  his  vassal  Eg}'ptian 
states  for  the  remainder  of  his  reign  in  peace.  The 
fragments  of  a  clay  tablet  bearing  the  seal  of  Shabaka 
and  a  king  of  Assyria,  found  at  Kuyunjik,  may  indicate 
some  agreement  between  the  two  nations.  At  Thebes 
Shabaka  reinstated  Amenardis,  his  sister,  who  must  have 
been  temporarily  expelled  by  Osorkon  III.  Together 
vdth  her,  he  built  a  chapel  at  Karnak,  and  his  building 
operations  necessitated  an  expedition  to  the  distant 
quarries  of  Hammamat.  We  also  find  records  of  his 
temple  restorations  at  Thebes,  and  it  is  evident  that  he 
governed  Eg}'pt  at  least  in  his  relations  with  the  temples, 
precisely  as  a  native  Pharaoh  would  have  done.  It 
was  probably  Shabaka  who  now  broke  the  power  of  the 
High  Priest  of  Amon,  of  whose  impotence  we  shall  see 
further  evidence  as  we  proceed. 

381.  About  700  b.  c,  Shabaka  was  succeeded  by 
Shabataka,  another  Ethiopian,  whose  connection  with 
the  reigning  Ethiopian  or  Nubian  family  is  a  little 
uncertain,  although  ^Nlanetho,  who  calls  him  Sebichos, 
makes  him  a  son  of  Shabaka.  As  the  western  vassals 
remained  quiet  and  Sennacherib  was  now  absorbed  in 
his  operations  at  the  other  extremity  of  his  empire, 
Shabataka  was  unmolested  by  the  Assyrian.  His  name 
is  rare  in  Eg}'pt,  but  it  is  evident  from  the  conditions 
w^hich  sur^dved  him  that  he  was  entirely  unable  to 
exterminate  the  local  dynasts  and  consolidate  the  power 
of  Eg}^pt  for  the  supreme  struggle  which  was  before 
her.  It  was  indeed  now  patent  that  the  Ethiopians 
were  quite  unfitted  for  the  imperial  task  before  them. 
The  southern  strain  with  which  their  blood  was  tinct- 


378      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


ured  began  to  appear  as  the  reign  of  Shabataka  drew 
to  a  close  about  688  b.  c. 

382.  It  is  at  this  juncture  that  we  can  trace  the  rising 
fortunes  of  a  son  of  Piankhi,  prince  Taharka,  whose 
features,  as  preserved  in  contemporary  sculptures,  show 
unmistakable  negroid  characteristics.  He  had  been 
entrusted  with  the  command  of  the  army  in  the  cam- 
paign against  Sennacherib.  AMiile  we  know  nothing  of 
the  circumstances  which  brought  about  his  advent  to 
the  throne,  Manetho  states,  that  leading  an  army  from 
Ethiopia  he  slew  Sebichos,  who  must  be  Shabataka,  and 
seized  the  crown.  The  contemporary  monuments, 
without  intimation  of  these  events,  abruptly  picture 
him  in  Tanis  as  king,  summoning  his  mother,  whom  he 
has  not  seen  for  many  years,  from  Xapata  to  Tanis,  that 
she  may  assume  her  proper  station  as  queen-mother 
there.  In  view  of  this  fact  and  the  trouble  to  be  antici- 
pated from  Assyria,  it  is  not  improbable  that  the  Ethi- 
opians at  this  time  maintained  Tanis  as  their  Egyptian 
residence  (BAR,  IV,  892-896). 

383.  For  some  thirteen  years  Taharka  ruled  his 
kingdom  without  molestation  from  Asia.  The  west  had 
for  twenty  years  seen  nothing  of  Sennacherib,  who  was 
now  assassinated  by  his  sons,  in  681  B.  c.  As  soon  as 
his  son,  Esarhaddon,  could  arrange  the  affairs  of  the 
great  empire  to  which  he  had  succeeded,  he  determined 
to  resort  to  the  only  possible  remedy  for  the  constant 
interference  of  Egypt  with  the  authority  of  Assyria  in 
Palestine,  viz.,  the  conquest  of  the  Nile  country  and 
humiliation  of  the  Pharaoh.  With  farseeing  thorough- 
ness, he  laid  his  plans  for  the  execution  of  this  purpose, 
and  his  army  w^as  knocking  at  the  frontier  fortresses  of 
the  eastern  Delta  in  674  b.  c.  But  Taharka,  who  was  a 
man  of  far  greater  ability  than  his  two  Ethiopian  pred- 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SUPREMACY 


379 


ecessors,  must  have  made  a  supreme  effort  to  meet  the 
crisis.  The  outcome  of  the  battle  (673  B.  c.)  was  un- 
favourable for  the  .Assyrian  if  indeed,  as  the  documents 
perhaps  indicate,  he  did  not  suffer  positive  defeat. 
But  Esarhaddon  nevertheless  quietly  continued  his 
preparations  for  the  conquest  of  Egypt.  Baal,  king  of 
Tyre,  perhaps  encouraged  by  the  undecisive  result  of 
the  first  Assyrian  invasion,  then  rebelled,  making 
common  cause  with  Taharka.  In  670  b.  c.  Esarhaddon 
was  again  in  the  West  at  the  head  of  his  forces.  Having 
invested  Tyre,  he  defeated  and  scattered  the  Egyptian 
army.  As  the  Ethiopian  fell  back  upon  ^Memphis, 
Esarhaddon  pressed  him  closely,  and  besieged  and 
captured  the  city,  which  fell  a  rich  prey  to  the  cruel  and 
rapacious  Xinevite  army.  Fleeing  southward  Taharka 
abandoned  Lower  Egypt,  which  was  immediately 
organized  by  Esarhaddon  into  dependencies  of  Assyria. 
He  records  the  names  of  twentv  lords  of  the  Delta, 
formerly  Ethiopian  vassals,  who  now  took  the  oath  of 
fealty  to  him.  Among  these  names,  -^Titten  in  cunei- 
form, a  number  may  be  recognized  as  those  of  the  same 
men  with  eighteen  of  whom  Piankhi  had  to  deal  in  the 
same  region.  Necho,  doubtless  a  descendant  of  Tef- 
nakhte,  occupies  the  most  prominent  place  among  them 
as  prince  of  Sais  and  ^Memphis.  The  list  also  includes 
a  prince  of  Thebes,  but  Esarhaddon  certainly  possessed 
no  more  than  a  merely  nominal  authority  in  Upper 
Egypt  at  this  time.  As  he  returned  to  Nineveh,  north- 
ward along  the  coast  road,  he  hewed  in  the  rocks  at  the 
Dog  River,  beside  the  triumphant  stelae  of  Ramses 
n  (p.  303),  a  record  of  his  great  achievement;  while  in 
Samal  (Senjirli),  in  north  Syria,  he  erected  a  similar 
monument  representing  himself  of  heroic  stature,  leading 
two  captives,  of  whom  one  is  probably  Baal  of  T}Te, 


380      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


and  the  other,  as  his  negroid  features  indicate,  is  the 
unfortunate  Taharka  (WUAG,  97 

384.  After  the  domination  of  Libyan  and  Nubian  in 
turn,  Egypt  was  now  a  prey  to  a  third  foreign  conqueror, 
who,  however,  differed  essentially  from  the  others,  in 
that  he  resided  abroad,  and  evinced  not  the  slightest 
sympathy  with  Egyptian  institutions  or  customs.  The 
result  was  that  the  Delta  kinglets,  who  had  sworn 
allegiance  to  the  Ninevite,  immediately  plotted  with 
Taharka  for  the  resumption  of  his  rule  in  Lower  Egypt, 
which  he  thereupon  assumed  without  much  delay  on  the 
withdrawal  of  the  Assyrian  army.  Esarhaddon  was 
thus  forced  to  begin  his  work  over  again ;  but  in  668  B.  c, 
while  on  the  march  to  resume  operations  in  Egypt,  he 
died.  With  but  slight  delay  the  campaign  was  con- 
tinued by  his  son,  Ashurbanipal,  who  placed  one  of  his 
commanders  in  charge  of  the  expedition.  Between 
Memphis  and  the  frontier  of  the  eastern  Delta,  Taharka 
was  again  routed.  He  fled  to  Thebes,  this  time  pur- 
sued by  the  Assyrians  who  made  the  forty  days^  march 
thither,  determined  to  expel  him  from  Egypt.  WTiether 
the  enemy  actually  captured  Thebes  at  this  time  is  some- 
what doubtful.  In  any  case,  Ashurbanipal  was  still 
unable  to  extend  his  authority  to  Upper  Egypt.  He  had 
hardly  restored  his  supremacy  in  the  Delta  when  his 
vassals  there  again  began  communicating  with  Taharka, 
purposing  his  restoration  as  before.  But  their  corre- 
spondence with  Taharka  was  discovered  by  the  Assyrian 
oflScials  in  Egypt,  and  they  were  sent  to  Nineveh  in 
chains.  There  the  wily  Necho,  whom  Esarhaddon  had 
made  king  of  Sais,  was  able  to  win  the  confidence  of 
Ashurbanipal,  who  pardoned  him,  loaded  him  with 
honours  and  restored  him  to  his  kingdom  in  Sais,  while 
his  son  was  appointed  to  rule  Athribis.    At  the  same 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SUPREMACY 


3S1 


time  Ashurbanipal  accompanied  him  with  Assyrian 
officials,  intended  of  course  to  be  a  check  upon  his  con- 
duct. Taharka  was  now  unable  to  gain  any  further 
foothold  among  the  Assyrian  vassals  in  the  Delta.  He 
probably  held  Thebes,  where  he  controlled  the  fortune 
of  Amon  by  causing  his  sister,  Shepnupet,  to  be  adopted 
by  Amenardis  the  "Divine  Votress,"  or  sacerdotal 
princess  of  Thebes,  who  had  been  appointed  by  Pi- 
ankhi  in  the  same  way.  At  Xapata  Taharka  either 
built  or  enlarged  two  considerable  temples,  and  the 
Ethiopian  capital  evidently  became  a  worthy  royal 
residence  in  his  time  (BAR,  IV,  901-916;  940; 
897#.). 

385.  Taharka  survived  but  a  few  months  his  ap- 
pointment of  Tanutamon,  a  son  of  Shabaka  as  coregent, 
who  then  succeeded  to  the  crown  in  663  b.  c.  En- 
couraged by  a  favourable  dream,  Tanutamon  undertook 
the  recovery  of  Lower  Egypt,  defeated  the  Assyrian 
commanders,  retook  Memphis,  and  demanded  the 
submission  of  the  Delta  dynasts.  He  had  hardly 
settled  in  ^Memphis,  when  Ashurbanipal's  army  ap- 
peared and  drove  the  Ethiopian  for  the  last  time  from 
Lower  Eg}'pt.  The  Assyrians  pursued  him  to  Thebes, 
and  as  he  ingloriously  withdrew  southward,  they  sacked 
and  plundered  the  magnificent  capital  of  Egypt's  age 
of  splendour.  The  story  of  the  ruin  of  Thebes  spread 
to  all  the  peoples  around,  and  when  the  prophet  Nahum 
was  denouncing  the  coming  destruction  of  Nineveh, 
fifty  years  later,  the  desolation  of  Thebes  was  still  fresh 
in  his  mind.  From  this  time  the  fortunes  of  the  vener- 
able city  steadily  declined  and  its  splendours,  such  as  no 
city  of  the  early  orient  had  ever  displayed,  gradually 
faded.  It  entered  upon  the  long  centuries  of  Hngering 
decay  which  have  left  it  at  the  present  day  still  the 


382      THE  DECADENCE  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT 


mightiest  ruin  surviving  from  the  ancient  world  (BAR, 
IV,  919-934;  Nahum,  III,  8-10;  WUAG). 

386.  As  the  Assyrians  withdrew  from  Thebes, 
Tanutamon  again  entered  the  desolated  city,  where  he 
maintained  himself  for  at  least  six  years  more  (till  655 
B.  c).  By  654  b.  c.  he  had  disappeared  from  Thebes, 
whether  by  death  or  retirement,  and  his  disappearance 
was  the  termination  of  Ethiopian  supremacy  in  Egypt 
(see  Note  IX).  At  a  time  when  Assyria  was  dominating 
the  East,  without  a  worthy  rival  elsewhere  to  stay  her 
hand,  it  was  to  be  expected  that  the  historic  people  of 
the  Nile  should  confront  her  and  dispute  her  progress 
on  even  terms.  To  this  great  task  the  Ethiopians  were 
appointed;  but  in  fact  Assyria  was  never  dealing  with 
a  first-class  f>ower  in  her  conquest  of  Egypt.  The 
Nubians  were  not  the  men  to  reorganize  a  long  deca- 
dent and  disorganized  nation,  and  the  unhappy  Nile- 
dwellers,  in  hopeless  impotence,  looked  in  vain  for  a 
strong  ruler,  throughout  the  supremacy  of  the  inglorious 
Ethiopians. 

387.  Withdrawing  to  Napata,  the  Ethiopians  never 
made  another  attempt  to  subdue  the  kingdom  of  the 
lower  river,  but  gave  their  attention  to  the  development 
of  Nubia.  As  the  Egyptians  resident  in  the  country 
died  out  and  were  not  replaced  by  others,  the  Egyptian 
gloss  which  the  people  had  received  began  rapidly  to 
disappear,  and  the  land  relapsed  into  a  semi-barbaric 
condition.  The  theocratic  character  of  the  government 
became  more  and  more  pronounced  until  the  king  was 
but  a  puppet  in  the  hands  of  the  priests,  at  whose  behest 
he  was  obliged  even  to  take  his  own  life  and  make  way 
for  another  weakling  whom  the  priests  might  choose. 
The  nation  soon  turned  its  face  southward.  By  560 
B.  c.  the  Nubian  kings  were  occupying  their  new  capital, 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SUPREMACY 


383 


far  above  the  fifth  cataract,  known  to  the  Greeks  as 
Meroe.  Apart  from  other  considerations,  the  wisdom 
of  thus  placing  the  difficuU  cataract  region  between  the 
capital  and  invaders  from  the  north  was  sho^m  by  the 
discomfiture  of  Cambyses*  expedition  against  Nubia  at 
the  hands  of  its  king  Nastesen  in  525  B.  c.  As  the 
nation  shifted  southward  it  was  completely  withdrawn 
from  contact  with  the  northern  world;  and  Ethiopia, 
gradually  lost  behind  a  mist  of  legend,  became  the  won- 
derland celebrated  in  Greek  story  as  the  source  of 
civilization.  The  Egyptian  language  and  hieroglyphics, 
which  the  kings  had  hitherto  used  for  their  records,  now 
slowly  disappeared,  and  by  the  beginning  of  our  era  the 
native  language  w^as  finally  wTitten  in  a  script  which  as 
yet  is  undeciphered.  When  a  century  or  two  after  the 
Roman  conquests,  the  Ethiopian  kingdom  slowly  col- 
lapsed and  fell  to  pieces,  its  northern  districts  were 
absorbed  by  wild  hordes  of  the  Blemmyes  who  pushed 
in  from  the  east;  while  in  the  south  it  was  succeeded  by 
the  Christian  kingdom  of  Abyssinia,  which  rose  at  the 
sources  of  the  Blue  Nile  in  the  fourth  century  a.  d.  and 
finally  acquired  the  name  of  its  ancient  Ethiopian 
predecessor. 


PART  vm 

THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


XXVII 


THE  RESTORATION 

388.  On  the  death  of  Necho  of  Sais,  probably  at  the 
hands  of  Tanutamon,  Psamtik  his  son  had  fled  to  the 
Assyrians.  Having  thus  shown  his  fidehty,  he  was 
installed  over  his  father's  kingdom  of  Sais  and  Mem- 
phis by  Ashurbanipal.  The  Delta  continued  under  the 
mercenary  lords  in  control  there  with  some  interruptions 
since  the  Twenty-first  Dynasty,  while  in  Upper  Egypt, 
as  we  have  seen,  Tanutamon  at  first  maintained  himself 
at  Thebes.  Outwardly  there  was  little  indication  of 
the  brilliant  day  w^hich  was  now  daw^ning  upon  the 
long  afflicted  nation.  Psamtik,  scion  of  a  line  of  men 
of  marked  power  and  political  sagacity,  soon  shook  off 
the  restraint  and  supervision  of  the  resident  Assyrian 
ofiicials.  He  can  hardly  have  been  unaware  that 
Ashurbanipal  was  ere  long  to  be  engaged  in  a  deadly 
struggle  w^th  his  brother,  the  king  of  Babylon,  involving 
dangerous  complications  with  Elam.  As  this  war  came 
on  (652  B.  c.)  an  attempt  of  the  Arabian  tribes  to  send 
aid  to  Babylon  demanded  an  Assyrian  expedition 
thither;  while  disturbances  among  the  peoples  on  the 
northern  borders  of  the  Ninevite  empire  and  the 
necessity  of  meeting  the  Cimmerians  in  Cilicia  required 
liberal  assignments  of  Ashurbanipal's  available  military 
forces  to  these  regions.  It  was  over  twelve  years  before 
these  difficulties  were  ul\  adjusted,  and  when  in  640  b.  c. 

387 


388         THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


peace  at  last  settled  upon  the  Assyrian  empire,  Psam- 
tik's  movement  had  gone  too  far  and  Ashurbanipal 
evidently  did  not  care  to  risk  opposing  it. 

389.  With  Psamtik,  the  Greek  traditions  regarding 
Egypt  begin  to  be  fairly  trustworthy,  if  the  folk-tales 
which  the  Greeks  so  readily  credited  be  properly  sifted. 
In  these,  as  transmitted  by  Herodotus,  we  can  follow 
the  rise  of  Psamtik,  as  he  employs  the  Ionian  and 
Carian  mercenaries  dispatched  from  Asia  Minor  by 
Gyges,  king  of  Lydia,  who  at  this  juncture,  after  court- 
ing the  Assyrians  to  save  himself  from  the  Cimmerian 
hordes,  is  anxious  to  combine  with  Egypt  in  common 
opposition  to  Ninevite  aggression.  The  Assyrian  annals 
state  that  he  sent  assistance  to  Egypt.  It  is  not  to  be 
doubted  that  Psamtik  took  advantage  of  these  favouring 
circumstances  in  the  creation  of  which  he  had  of  course 
had  a  hand,  and  by  such  means  gained  permanent 
ascendency  over  the  local  dynasts. 

390.  His  progress  was  rapid.  By  654  b.  c,  while 
Ashurbanipal  was  attacking  Babylon,  he  had  gained 
Thebes,  where  Tanutamon  had  by  that  time  either 
died  or  retired  to  Napata  (See  Note  IX).  In  order  to 
obtain  legitimate  control  of  the  fortune  of  Amon,  now 
of  course  much  depleted,  Psamtik  decreed  that  his 
daughter  Nitocris  should  be  adopted  by  the  Divine 
Votress  at  Thebes,  Shepnupet,  the  sister  of  the  deceased 
Taharka.  The  collapse  of  the  high  priesthood  of 
Amon  was  now  so  complete  that  within  sixty  years  the 
once  powerful  office  was  actually  held  by  these  sacerdotal 
princesses.  The  High  Priest  of  Amon  was  a  woman! 
In  the  suppression  of  the  mercenary  lords  and  local 
dynasts  by  Psamtik,  the  nation  was  at  last  rescued  from 
the  unstable  rule  of  a  body  of  feudal  lords  and  their 
turbulent  military  adherents,  under  whose  irresponsible 


THE  RESTORATION 


389 


tyranny  it  had  suffered,  with  but  brief  respites,  for  some 
four  hundred  years.  This  remarkable  achievement  of 
Psamtik  I  places  him  among  the  ablest  rulers  who  ever 
sat  on  the  throne  of  the  Pharaohs.  He  was  not,  however, 
able  completely  to  exterminate  the  d}Tiasts,  as  is  com- 
monly stated.  Some  of  them  would  of  course  espouse 
his  cause  and  thus  gain  immunity,  like  Mentemhet. 
prince  of  Thebes,  or  Prince  Hor  of  Heracleopolis 
(BAR,  IV,  937;  949;  935-958;  988  D;  967-973;  902 
end). 

391.  A  not  less  troublesome  problem  was  the  organ- 
ization of  the  military  class.  The  now  completely 
Eg}'ptianized  Libyans  who  had  lived  in  Egypt  for 
centuries  had  finally  developed  into  a  warrior-class  of 
no  great  effectiveness,  whose  numbers  at  this  time  ab- 
surdly exaggerated  by  Herodotus,  we  cannot  determine. 
Besides  that  of  the  feudal  lords,  it  was  also  the  opposi- 
tion of  this  class  which  Psamtik  had  been  obliged  to 
face;  and  he  had  no  recourse  but  to  pit  against  them  his 
northern  mercenaries,  the  Greeks  and  Carians.  Thus 
Eg}-pt,  having  suffered  the  inevitable  fate  of  a  military 
kingdom  m  the  ancient  world,  was  passing  into  the 
control  of  one  foreign  warrior-class  after  another.  The 
army  which  Psamtik  I  now  put  together  was  made  up  of 
Greeks,  Carians  and  Syrians  on  the  one  hand,  and  on 
the  other  of  Libyans  and  their  Eg\^ptianized  kindred. 
The  lonians  and  Carians  were  stationed  on  the  north- 
eastern frontier  near  Daphnje,  with  a  branch  of  the 
Nile  running  through  their  camp;  while  the  border  of 
the  western  Delta  was  secured  by  a  body  of  the  warrior- 
class  in  a  stronghold  at  ]\Iarea,  not  far  from  the  site  of 
later  Alexandria.  At  Elephantine  a  similar  garrison 
was  maintained  against  any  invasion  from  the  south. 
Herodotus  relates  that  two  hundred  and  forty  thousand 


390         THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


of  the  warrior-class,  having  been  kept  at  one  station  for 
three  years  without  being  relieved,  thereupon  deserted 
and  departed  in  a  body  southward  to  offer  their  services 
to  the  king  of  Ethiopia  at  Meroe.  While  his  numbers 
are  incredibly  exaggerated,  as  usual,  the  story  must  con- 
tain a  germ  of  fact  as  it  accords  with  all  that  we  know 
of  the  conditions  in  Psamtik's  time.  As  a  concession 
to  this  class  his  body-guard  contained  a  thousand  men 
from  each  of  the  two  classes,  the  Hermotybies  and 
Calasyries;  but  he  will  have  had  many  more  of  his 
hardy  Greeks  and  Carians  at  his  hand  on  all  occasions. 

392.  The  prosperous  and  powerful  Egypt  which  was 
now  emerging  from  the  long  Decadence  was  totally 
different  from  the  Egypt  of  any  earlier  renascence.  It 
was  impossible  again  to  rouse  the  nation  to  arms  as  in 
the  days  when  the  Hyksos  were  expelled ;  it  was  there- 
fore inevitably  the  deliberate  policy  of  Psamtik  I,  while 
expending  every  effort  to  put  the  nation  on  a  sound 
economic  basis,  at  the  same  time  to  depend  upon  foreign 
soldiery  for  the  military  power  indispensable  to  an 
oriental  ruler.  His  necessarily  constant  care  was  to 
transmute  the  economic  prosperity  of  the  land  into 
military  power.  In  a  word,  the  wealth  of  the  land  must 
nourish  and  maintain  a  formidable  army,  even  though 
the  effective  portion  of  this  army  might  be  aliens.  A 
revival  under  such  conditions  as  these  is  due  almost 
solely  to  the  personal  initiative  of  the  sovereign  who 
manipulates  the  available  forces:  those  of  power  and 
those  of  industry;  so  employing  them  all  in  harmonious 
interaction  that  prosperity  and  effective  power  result. 
Psamtik  was  himself  the  motive  and  creative  power, 
while  the  people  were  but  given  the  opportunity  to 
fulfil  their  proper  functions  and  to  move  freely  in  their 
wonted  channels.    There  was  nc  longer  any  grot 


THE  RESTORATION 


391 


reJatiVe  vitality  in  the  nation,  and  the  return  of  ordered 
government  and  consequent  prosperity  enabled  them 
to  indulge  the  tendency  to  retrospect  already  observable 
in  the  Twenty -third  Dynasty.  The  nation  fell  back 
upon  the  past  and  consciously  endeavoured  to  restore 
and  rehabilitate  the  vanished  state  of  the  old  days 
before  the  changes  and  innovations  introduced  by  the 
Empire.  Seen  through  the  mist  of  over  a  thousand 
years,  what  was  to  them  ancient  Egypt  was  endowed 
with  the  ideal  perfection  of  the  divine  regime  which  had 
preceded  it.  The  worship  of  the  kings  who  had  ruled 
at  Memphis  in  those  remote  days  was  revived  and  the 
ritual  of  their  mortuary  service  maintained  and  en- 
dowed. Their  pyramids  were  even  extensively  re- 
stored and  repaired.  The  archaic  titles  and  the  long 
array  of  dignities  worn  by  the  lords  at  the  court  and  in 
the  government  of  the  pyramid-builders  w^ere  again 
brought  into  requisition,  and  in  the  externals  of  govern- 
ment everything  possible  was  done  to  clothe  it  with  the 
appearance  of  remote  antiquity.  The  ^Titing  of  the 
time  w^as  also  given  an  archaic  colour  on  formal  and 
oflficial  monuments,  and  its  antique  forms  must  have 
cost  the  Saite  scribes  long  and  weary  study.  In  religion 
every  effort  was  made  to  purify  the  pantheon  of  all 
modern  interlopers  and  to  rid  the  ritual  of  every  inno- 
vation. Everything  foreign  in  religion  w^as  banished, 
and  Set,  the  god  of  the  waste  and  the  desert,  was  every- 
where exterminated.  An  inexorable  exclusiveness,  like 
that  which  was  soon  to  take  possession  of  the  new-born 
Jewish  community,  was  also  now  universally  enforced - 
The  ancient  mortuary  texts  of  the  pyramids  were  re- 
vived, and  although  frequently  not  understood  were 
engraved  upon  the  massive  stone  sarcophagi.  The 
Book  of  the  Dead,  which  now  received  its  last  redaction. 


392 


THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


becoming  a  roll  sixty  feet  long,  shows  plain  traces  of 
the  revival  of  this  ancient  mortuary  literature.  In  the 
tomb-chapels  we  find  again  the  fresh  and  pleasing 
pictures  from  the  life  of  the  people  in  marsh  and 
meadow,  in  workshop  and  shipyard.  They  are  perfect 
reproductions  of  the  relief  scenes  in  the  mastabas  of  the 
Old  Kingdom,  so  perfect  indeed  that  at  the  first  glance 
one  is  not  infrequently  in  doubt  as  to  the  age  of  the 
monument.  Indeed,  a  man  named  Aba  at  Thebes  sent 
his  artists  to  an  Old  Kingdom  tomb  near  Siut  to  copy 
the  reliefs  thence  for  use  in  his  own  Theban  tomb, 
because  the  owner  of  the  ancient  tomb  was  also  named 
Aba. 

393.  In  this  endeavour  to  reconstitute  modern  re- 
ligion, society  and  government  upon  ancient  lines,  the 
archaizers  must  consciously  or  unconsciously  have  been 
constantly  thwarted  by  the  inevitable  mutability  of  the 
social,  political  and  economic  conditions  of  a  race. 
The  two  thousand  years  which  had  elapsed  since  the 
Old  Kingdom  could  not  be  annihilated.  Through  the 
deceptive  mantle  of  antiquity  with  which  they  cloaked 
contemporary  conditions,  the  inexorable  realities  of  the 
present  were  discernible.  The  solution  of  this  difficulty, 
when  perceived,  was  the  same  as  that  attempted  by 
the  Hebrews  in  a  similar  dilemma :  it  was  but  to  attrib- 
ute to  the  modern  elements  also  a  hoary  antiquity,  as 
the  whole  body  of  Hebrew  legislation  was  attributed  to 
Moses.  The  theoretical  revival  was  thus  rescued. 
This  was  especially  easy  for  the  Egyptian  of  the  Saitic 
restoration;  for,  long  before  his  time  it  had  been  cus- 
tomary to  attribute  to  the  Old  Kingdom  especially 
sacred  mortuary  texts,  favourite  medical  prescriptions 
and  collections  of  proverbial  wisdom.  While  in  some 
cases  such  attribution  may  have  been  correct  in  the 


THE  RESTORATION 


393 


days  of  the  Empire,  this  was  no  longer  generally  true 
in  the  Twenty-sixth  Dynasty.  In  one  particular  espe- 
cially, it  was  impossible  to  force  the  present  into  the 
ancient  mould;  I  refer  to  the  artistic  capacity  of  the 
people.  This  always  fruitful  element  of  their  culture 
was  now  a  marked  exception  to  the  lifeless  lack  of  initia- 
tive displayed  in  all  other  functions  of  life.  Here  their 
creative  vitality,  already  revived  in  the  Ethiopian  period, 
was  still  unblighted,  and  their  artistic  sense  was  keenly 
alive  to  the  new  possibilities  open  to  them  under  the 
new  order.  We  have  seen  that  the  Restoration  in 
religion  demanded  the  revival  of  the  old  subjects  in  the 
tomb-chapel  reliefs,  and  in  spite  of  the  likeness  of  these 
copies  to  their  ancient  models,  more  than  a  superficial 
examination  invariably  discloses  a  distinct  character 
and  manner  peculiarly  their  own.  There  is  just  that 
touch  of  freedom  which  the  art  of  the  Old  Kingdom 
lacked,  and  a  soft  beauty  in  their  sinuous  and  sweeping 
lines  which  adds  an  indescribable  grace  to  the  reliefs  of 
the  Saitic  school.  While  the  old  canons  and  conven- 
tionalities still  prevailed  in  general,  there  was  now  and 
then  an  artist  who  could  shake  them  off  and  place  the 
human  body  in  relief  with  the  shoulders  dra^vm  in  proper 
relations  and  freed  from  the  distortion  of  the  Old 
Kingdom.  It  was  this  freedom  and  ability  to  see  things 
as  they  are  which  led  to  a  school  of  portraiture  surpass- 
ing the  best  work  of  the  Old  Kingdom.  These  portrait 
heads  both  in  relief  and  in  the  round,  display  a  study 
of  the  bony  conformation  of  the  skull,  the  folds  and 
wTinkles  of  the  skin,  in  fine  a  mastery  of  the  entire 
anatomical  development  and  a  grasp  of  individual 
character  such  as  no  early  art  had  yet  achieved.  Such 
works  can  only  be  compared  with  the  portraits  of  the 
Greek  sculptors  at  the  height  of  their  skill,  and  they 


394 


THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


do  not  suffer  by  the  comparison.  The  artist  in  bronze, 
was  now  supreme,  hollow  casts  of  considerable  size  werc^ 
made  and  animal  forms  are  especially  fine.  Superb 
bronze  statues  elaborately  inlaid  with  rich  designs  in 
gold,  silver  and  electrum  display  surprising  refinements 
in  technique.  Works  in  bronze  are  now  very  numerous 
and  most  of  those  which  fill  the  modern  museums  were 
produced  in  this  age.  Industrial  art  flourished  as 
never  before  and  the  Egyptian  craftsman  was  rarely 
rivalled.  In  fayence  the  manufactories  of  the  time  were 
especially  successful  and  prolific,  and  the  museum  col- 
lections are  filled  with  works  of  this  period.  The 
architecture  of  the  time  has,  alas,  perished,  and  if  we 
may  judge  from  the  achievements  of  the  Saitic  sculptor, 
we  have  in  this  respect  suffered  irreparable  loss;  for  it  is 
probable  that  we  owe  the  origin  of  the  rich  and  beautiful 
columns  of  Ptolemaic  temples  to  the  Saite  architect. 

394.  While  the  material  products  of  art  offered  visual 
evidence  of  marked  divergence  from  the  ancient  proto- 
type which  it  was  supposed  to  follow,  such  incongruities 
in  the  organization  of  the  government,  while  not  less 
real,  were  probably  not  so  evident.  From  the  few  sur- 
viving monuments  of  the  period  the  real  character  of 
the  state  is  not  clearly  determinable.  Geographically 
the  Delta  had  forever  become  the  dominant  region. 
The  development  ot  commerce  with  the  northern  world 
and  related  pohtical  reasons  had  made  this  northward 
shift  inevitable  and  permanent.  Psamtik  and  his 
descendants  lived  in  their  native  Sais,  which  now  became 
a  great  and  splendid  city,  adorned  with  temples  and 
palaces.  Thebes  no  longer  possessed  either  political  or 
religious  significance.  The  valley  of  the  Nile  was  but  an 
appendage  upon  the  Delta.  We  have  already  referred 
to  the  survival  of  certain  of  the  feudal  lords.  They 


THE  RESTORATION 


395 


may  have  retained  their  lands,  but,  judging  from  the 
case  of  Mentemhet  of  Thebes,  they  could  not  bequeath 
them  to  their  sons.  With  these  exceptions  all  the  land 
belonged  to  the  croTsm  and  was  worked  by  the  peasant 
serfs,  who  rendered  twenty  per  cent,  of  the  yield  to  the 
Pharaoh.  Priests  and  soldiers  were  exempt  from 
taxation.  The  administration  must  have  been  con- 
ducted as  under  the  Empire  by  local  officials  of  the  cen- 
tral government,  who  collected  the  taxes  and  possessed 
judicial  powers.  The  archaic  titles  which  they  bear,  as 
far  as  I  have  been  able  to  trace  them,  usually  correspond 
to  no  real  functions  in  government.  In  education  and 
training  these  men  are  fundamentally  different  from 
the  scribal  officials  of  the  Empire,  in  that  they  are  not  of 
necessity  possessed  of  a  knowledge  of  the  old  hierogly- 
phic. Since  the  Ethiopian  Dynasty  there  has  grown 
up  a  very  cursive  form  of  hieratic,  the  ancient  running 
hand.  This  new  and  more  rapid  form,  an  unconscious 
development,  is  better  suited  to  the  needs  of  practical 
business  and  administration,  and  being  in  common  and 
everyday  use  was  therefore  known  to  the  Greeks  as 
"demotic"  writing,  a  term  now  usually  applied  to  it 
at  the  present  day.  It  represented  the  language  then 
spoken,  while  the  hieroglyphic  of  the  time,  which  con- 
tinued to  lead  an  artificial  existence,  employed  the  ar- 
chaic form  of  the  language  which  had  prevailed  centuries 
before.  That  this  fundamental  change  was  but  one 
among  many  modifications  and  alterations  in  the  govern- 
ment, must  of  necessity  have  resulted  from  the  changed 
conditions.  Socially,  the  influence  of  revived  industry 
had  divided  the  people  into  more  or  less  sharply  defined 
classes  or  guilds,  determined  by  their  occupations;  but 
"caste"  in  the  proper  significance  of  the  term,  was  as 
unknoTVTi  as  at  any  time  in  Eg\'ptian  history. 


396         THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


395.  The  priests  succeeded  little  better  than  the 
officials  in  their  revival  of  the  good  old  times.  It  is, 
indeed,  to  the  priesthoods  in  general  that  the  attempted 
restoration  must  be  largely  attributed.  The  religious, 
like  the  political,  centre,  had  completely  shifted ;  Thebes, 
as  we  have  stated,  no  longer  possessed  any  religious 
significance.  In  the  Delta  cities  of  Sais,  Athribis  and 
Buto  were  the  wealthiest  temples.  Quite  in  contrast 
with  conditions  in  the  Old  Kingdom,  the  priests  now 
constituted  a  more  exclusive  and  distinct  class  than  ever 
before,  and  the  office  had  become  inalienably  hereditary. 
Venerated  by  the  people,  it  was  a  political  necessity  that 
their  maintenance  should  be  provided  for  by  liberal 
revenues.  While  they  no  longer  possessed  any  political 
influence  to  be  compared  with  that  which  they  exercised 
under  the  Empire,  yet  we  find  the  old  count  of  Thinis 
deprived  of  his  ancient  revenues  from  the  oases  and  the 
local  ferry,  that  they  may  be  transferred  to  Osiris. 
The  reverse  was,  however,  the  rule,  as  we  shall  see. 
The  old  gods  could  not  be  resuscitated;  among  them 
only  Osiris  still  maintained  himself.  His  consort,  Isis, 
contrary  to  the  ancient  customs,  acquired  an  elaborate 
cultus,  and  the  wide  celebrity  which  afterward  brought 
her  such  general  favour  in  the  classic  world.  Imhotep, 
the  wise  man  of  Zoser's  court  twenty-five  hundred  years 
earlier,  now  gained  a  place  among  the  gods,  as  son  of 
Ptah,  an  innovation  of  which  the  priests  were  uncon- 
scious. The  religion  which  the  priests  represented  was 
the  inevitable  result  of  the  tendencies  observable  at  the 
close  of  the  Empire.  It  consisted  as  far  as  daily  life 
and  conduct  were  concerned,  like  the  Rabbinical  faith 
born  under  very  similar  conditions,  in  innumerable  ex- 
ternal usages,  and  the  most  painful  observance  of  the 
laws  of  ceremonial  purity.    It  was  an  age  of  unhealthy 


THE  RESTORATION 


397 


and  excessive  religiousness.  We  find  nobles  and 
officials  everywhere  erecting  sanctuaries  to  the  gods. 
While  formerly  only  one  of  a  class  of  animals  was 
sacred,  now  in  many  cases  every  representative  of  that 
class  was  inviolable.  The  increased  reverence  for  these 
manifestations  of  the  gods  is  especially  illustrated  in 
the  elaborate  worship  of  the  Apis-bull,  a  form  of  Ptah, 
and  the  vast  sepulchre,  where  they  now  received  their 
gorgeous  burial,  the  Serapeum  of  Memphis  became 
famous  among  the  Greeks.  WTiile  a  slight  inclination 
toward  this  tendency  was  observ^able  already  in  the  Old 
Kingdom,  it  now  took  on  the  crass  form,  which  finally 
led  to  the  fanatical  excesses  of  the  Alexandrians  in 
Roman  times.  It  is  probable  that  the  priests  read  into 
all  these  outward  manifestations,  as  into  their  mytho- 
logical tales,  a  higher  meaning,  which  they  never 
originally  possessed;  but  we  are  unable  to  determine 
whether  they  actually  taught  all  that  the  Greeks  attri- 
bute to  them  of  this  character,  ^^^lile  their  education 
in  the  Empire  had  kept  them  in  contact  with  the  living 
times,  they  were  now  obliged  to  learn  a  language  and 
a  method  of  WTiting,  and  to  acquaint  themselves  with  a 
mass  of  inherited  literature,  with  which  the  busy  world 
around  them  had  long  parted  company.  It  was  by 
this  process  that  the  ancient  \^Titing,  already  early  re- 
garded as  of  divine  origin,  became  a  sacred  accomplish- 
ment, the  especial  characteristic  of  sacred  learning,  and 
was  therefore  called  by  the  Greeks  "hieroglyphs"  or 
sacred  glyphs.  Such  an  education  necessarily  projected 
the  priests  far  back  into  a  long  forgotten  world,  whose 
inherited  wisdom,  as  among  the  Chinese  or  the  Moham- 
medans, was  the  final  word.  The  writings  and  sacred 
rolls  of  the  past  were  now  eagerly  sought  out,  and  with 
the  dust  of  ages  upon  them,  they  were  collected,  sorted 


398         THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


and  arranged.  Thus  the  past  was  supreme;  the  priest 
who  cherished  it  lived  in  a  realm  of  shadows,  and  for 
the  contemporary  world  he  had  no  vital  meaning. 
Likewise  in  Babylon  the  same  retrospective  spirit  was 
now  the  dominant  characteristic  of  the  reviving  empire 
of  Nebuchadrezzar.  The  world  was  already  growing 
old,  and  everywhere  men  were  fondly  dwelling  on  her 
faraway  youth  (BAR,  IV,  956;  1024;  967  ]J.;  989  ff.; 
1015 

396.  AMiile  the  internal  aspects  of  the  Saitic  period 
are  so  largely  retrospective  that  it  has  been  well  called 
the  Restoration,  yet  its  foreign  policy  shows  little 
consideration  for  the  past.  In  sharp  contrast  with  the 
attempted  restoration  and  especially  with  the  national 
exclusiveness,  now  more  intense  than  ever,  was  the 
foreign  policy  of  Psamtik  I.  The  reorganization  of 
ordered  and  centralized  government,  and  the  restoration 
of  the  elaborate  irrigation  system,  w^ere  quite  sufficient 
to  ensure  the  internal  prosperity  of  the  country  along 
traditional  lines.  But  Psamtik's  early  life  and  training 
led  him  to  do  more  than  this.  He  comprehended  the 
great  economic  value  of  foreign  traffic  to  the  nation  he 
was  building  up;  nor  did  he  fail  to  perceive  that  such 
traffic  might  be  variously  taxed  and  made  to  yield  large 
revenues  for  his  own  treasury.  He  therefore  revived 
the  old  connections  with  Syria;  Phoenician  galleys 
filled  the  Nile  mouths,  and  Semitic  merchants,  fore- 
runners of  the  Aramaeans  so  numerous  in  Persian  times, 
thronged  the  Delta.  If  Psamtik  was  able  to  employ 
the  Greeks  in  his  army  he  found  them  not  less  useful 
in  the  furtherance  of  his  commercial  projects.  From 
the  eighth  century  B.C.  those  southern  movements  of 
the  northerners,  of  which  the  incursions  of  the  "sea- 
peoples"  over  five  hundred  years  earlier  (pp.  333//.)  were 


THE  RESTORATION 


399 


the  premonitory  symptom,  had  now  become  daily 
occurrences.  The  Greeks,  pushing  in  from  the  far 
North,  and  emerging  clearly  for  the  first  time  into 
history,  had  long  since  gained  possession  of  the  Greek 
peninsula  and  its  adjacent  archipelago,  with  their 
centres  of  ]\Iycaenean  civilization,  and  they  now  ap- 
peared as  prosperous  communities  and  rapidly  growing 
maritime  states,  whose  fleets,  penetrating  throughout 
the  Mediterranean,  offered  the  Phoenicians  sharp  and 
incessant  competition.  Their  colonies  and  industrial 
settlements,  with  active  manufactories,  rapidly  fringed 
the  Mediterranean  and  penetrated  the  Black  Sea. 
Psamtik  was  probably  the  first  of  the  Egyptian  rulers 
who  favoured  such  colonies  in  Eg}^pt.  Ere  long  the 
country  was  filled  with  Greek  merchants  and  their 
manufacturing  settlements  were  permitted,  especially 
in  the  western  Delta,  near  the  royal  residence  at  Sais. 
There  was  a  Greek  and  also  a  Carian  quarter  in  Mem- 
phis, and  not  unlikely  other  large  cities  were  similarly 
apportioned  to  accommodate  foreigners,  especially 
Greeks. 

397.  Lines  of  communication  between  the  Greek 
states  and  Eg}-pt  soon  established  direct,  continuous 
and  in  some  respects  intimate  relations  between  them. 
Greek  recruits  for  the  army  of  course  followed  constantly 
upon  those  whom  Psamtik  had  employed  in  his  con- 
quest, and  these,  with  the  active  intercourse  of  the 
indefatigable  Greek  merchants,  carried  back  to  the 
mother-country  an  ever  increasing  fund  of  folk-tales, 
telling  of  the  wondrous  Egyptian  world,  which  was  so 
new  and  strange  to  them.  The  marvels  of  Thebes 
were  celebrated  in  the  Homeric  songs,  now  assuming 
their  final  form,  and  Egyptian  gods  appeared  in  their 
myths. 


400        THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


398.  Ultimately  the  Greeks  became  very  familiar 
with  the  externals  of  Egyptian  civilization,  but  they 
never  learned  to  read  its  curious  writing  sufficiently 
well  to  understand  its  surviving  records,  or  to  learn 
the  truth  as  to  its  ancient  history.  As  time  passed  a 
body  of  interpreters  arose,  who  became  so  numerous  as 
to  form  a  recognized  class.  By  these  such  questioners 
as  Herodotus  were  often  grossly  imposed  upon.  The 
impenetrable  reserve  of  the  Egyptians,  and  again  their 
unlimited  claims,  profoundly  impressed  the  imaginative 
Greek.  This  impression  could  only  be  deepened  by 
the  marvels  with  which  the  land  was  filled:  the  enor- 
mous buildings  and  temples,  whose  construction  was 
often  a  mystery  to  him;  the  mystic  writing  which  covered 
their  walls;  the  strange  river,  unlike  any  he  had  ever 
seen;  the  remarkable  religion,  whose  mysterious  ritual 
seemed  to  him  the  cloak  for  the  most  profound  truths; 
the  unquestionably  vast  antiquity  of  countless  impres- 
sive monuments  all  about  him;  all  this,  where  an  un- 
prejudiced, objective  study  of  the  people  and  their 
history  was  impossible,  inevitably  blinded  even  the 
Greek  of  the  highest  intelligence  and  culture,  who  now 
visited  the  country.  Thus  the  real  character  of  the 
Egyptian  and  his  civilization  was  never  correctly  under- 
stood by  the  Greeks,  and  their  writings  regarding  the 
Nile  country,  even  though  often  ridiculing  its  strange 
customs,  have  transmitted  to  us  a  false  impression  as  to 
the  value  especially  of  its  intellectual  achievements. 
The  Greek,  with  his  insatiable  thirst  for  the  truth,  and 
his  constant  attitude  of  healthy  inquiry,  was  vastly 
superior,  I  need  hardly  say,  to  the  Egyptian,  whose 
reputed  wisdom  he  so  venerated.  Under  these  circum- 
stances it  was  only  the  later  political  history  of  the 
country,  the  course  of  which  came  under  their  own 


THE  RESTORATION 


401 


immediate  observation,  with  which  the  Greeks  were 
familiar.  From  the  time  of  Psamtik  I  we  possess  a 
fund  of  popular  Greek  tradition  regarding  the  Twenty- 
sixth  Dynasty,  which,  if  properly  used,  throws  an 
invaluable  light  upon  a  time  when  native  records  and 
,  monuments,  located  as  they  were  in  the  exposed  Delta, 
have  almost  entirely  perished. 

399.  Before  the  impact  of  the  foreign  life,  which  thus 
flowed  in  upon  Egypt,  the  Egyptian  showed  himself 
entirely  unmoved,  and  held  himself  aloof,  fortified 
behind  his  ceremonial  purity  and  his  inviolable  reserve. 
If  he  could  have  had  his  way  he  would  have  banished 
the  foreigners  one  and  all  from  his  shores;  under  the 
circumstances,  like  the  modern  Chinese,  he  traflficked 
with  them  and  was  reconciled  to  their  presence  by  the 
gain  they  brought  him.  Thus,  while  the  Saitic  Phar- 
aohs, as  we  shall  further  see,  were  profoundly  influenced 
by  the  character  of  the  Greeks,  the  mass  of  the  Egyp- 
tians were  unscathed  by  it.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Greeks  must  have  profited  much  by  the  intercourse 
with  Nile  valley  civilization  although  it  will  have  been 
chiefly  material  profit  which  they  gained.  They  found 
there,  perfected  and  ready  at  hand,  the  technical 
processes,  which  their  unique  genius  was  so  singularly 
able  to  apply  to  the  realization  of  higher  ends  than  those 
governing  the  older  civilizations.  They  certainly  bor- 
rowed artistic  forms  in  plenty,  and  the  artistic  influences 
from  the  Nile,  which  had  been  felt  in  the  Mycenaean 
centres  of  civilizations  as  far  back  at  least  as  the  Twelfth 
Dynasty  (2000  B.C.),  were  still  a  power  in  the  same 
regions  of  the  North.  It  can  be  no  accident,  in  spite 
of  the  widespread  **law  of  frontality,'*  that  the  archaic 
Apollos  (so-called),  first  produced  by  the  Ionian 
Greeks,  reproduce  the  standing  posture  prevalent  in 


402         THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


Egypt  in  every  detail,  including  the  characteristic 
thrusting  forward  of  the  left  foot.  Of  the  Saitic  portrait 
sculptor,  the  Greeks  might  have  learned  much,  even  far 
down  toward  the  days  of  their  highest  artistic  achieve- 
ments. Evidence  of  intellectual  influence  is  more 
elusive,  but  there  is  a  grain  of  truth  in  the  Greek  tradi- 
tion that  they  received  their  philosophy  from  Egypt. 
The  philosophizing  theology  of  the  Egyptian  priests 
contained  suggestive  germs,  which  may  easily  have 
found  their  way  into  the  early  Ionian  systems.  The 
notion  of  the  primeval  intelligence  and  the  creative 
"  word,"  already  conceived  as  far  back  as  the  Eighteenth 
Dynasty  (p.  266),  could  hardly  fail  to  influence  the 
educated  Greeks  who  very  early  visited  Egypt,  long 
before  such  a  conception  had  arisen  in  Greece.  The 
insistent  belief  of  the  Egyptian  in  the  life  hereafter  and 
his  elaborate  mortuary  usages,  unquestionably  exerted 
a  strong  influence  upon  Greek  and  Roman  alike;  and 
the  wide  dissemination  of  Egyptian  religion  in  the 
classic  world,  demonstrates  the  deep  impression  which 
it  now  made.  To  this  day  its  symbols  are  turned  up 
by  the  spade  throughout  the  Mediterranean  basin. 
It  was  under  Psamtik  I  that  these  influences  from 
Egypt  begin  to  be  traceable  in  the  states,  which  were 
then  laying  the  foundations  of  later  European  civiliza- 
tion; and  it  is  significant  as  an  indication  of  the  great 
restorer's  personal  prestige  in  the  Greek  world  that  the 
powerful  Periander  of  Corinth  named  his  nephew  and 
successor  Psammetichos. 

400.  By  640  b.  c.  Psamtik  felt  himself  strong  enough 
to  resume  the  old  projects  of  conquest  in  Asia,  to  revive 
Egypt's  traditional  claims  upon  Syria-Palestine,  and  to 
dispute  their  possession  with  Assyria.  He  invaded 
Philistia  and  for  many  years  besieged  Ashdod;  but  his 


THE  RESTORATION 


403 


ambitions  there  were  rudely  dashed  by  the  influx  of 
Scythian  peoples  from  the  far  north,  who  overran 
Assyria  and  penetrated  southward  to  the  frontier  of 
Egypt.  According  to  Herodotus  they  were  bought 
off  by  Psamtik,  who  by  liberal  gifts  succeeded  thus  in 
ransoming  his  kingdom.  It  was  more  probably  his  o^ti 
strong  arm  that  delivered  his  land.  He  had  already 
saved  it  from  centuries  of  weakness  and  decay,  and  when 
he  died  after  a  reign  of  fifty-four  years,  he  left  Egypt 
enjoying  such  peaceable  prosperity  as  had  not  been  hers 
since  the  death  of  Ramses  III,  five  hundred  years 
before. 


XXVIII 

THE  FINAL  STRUGGLES:  BABYLON  AND  PERSIA 

401.  When  Necho  succeeded  his  father  Psamtik  I 
on  the  throne  of  Egypt  in  609  B.  c,  there  seemed  to  be 
nothing  to  prevent  his  re-establishment  of  the  Egyptian 
Empire  in  Asia.  As  Psamtik^s  kingdom  had  pros- 
pered, that  of  the  once  powerful  Ninevites  had  rapidly 
declined.  From  the  fearful  visitation  of  the  Scythian 
hordes  in  the  reign  of  Psamtik  I,  it  never  recovered,  and 
when  Babylon  made  common  cause  with  Cyaxares, 
king  of  the  rising  Median  states,  Nineveh  was  unable 
to  withstand  their  united  assaults.  Its  inevitable  fall 
was  anticipated  by  the  western  peoples,  and  being 
clearly  foreseen  by  the  Hebrew  Nahum,  he  exultingly 
predicted  its  destruction.  At  the  accession  of  Necho 
it  was  in  such  a  state  of  collapse  that  he  immediately 
began  the  realization  of  his  father ^s  imperial  designs  in 
Asia.  He  built  a  war-fleet  both  in  the  Mediterranean 
and  the  Red  Sea,  and  in  his  first  year  invaded  Philistia. 
Gaza  and  Askalon,  which  offered  resistance,  were  taken 
and  punished,  and  with  a  great  army  Necho  then 
pushed  northward.  In  Judah,  now  freed  from  the 
Assyrians,  the  prophetic  party  was  in  the  ascendancy. 
As  they  had  been  delivered  from  Sennacherib  nearly 
a  century  before,  so  they  fondly  believed  they  might 
now  face  Egypt  with  the  same  assurance  of  deliverance. 
On  the  historic  plain  of  Megiddo,  where  Egypt  had 

404 


THE  FIXAL  STRUGGLES 


405 


first  won  the  supremacy  of  Asia  nearly  nine  hundred 
years  before,  the  young  Josiah  recklessly  threw  himself 
upon  Necho's  great  army.  His  pitiful  force  was  quickly 
routed  and  he  himself,  fatally  wounded,  retired  to  die 
at  Jerusalem.  Expecting  to  meet  at  least  some  attempt 
on  the  part  of  Assyria  to  save  her  western  dominions, 
Necho  pressed  on  to  the  Euphrates  without  delay.  But 
Assyria  was  now  too  near  her  end  to  make  even  the 
feeblest  effort  to  stay  his  progress;  he  found  no  army 
there  to  meet  him,  and  not  feeling  himself  strong  enough 
to  advance  against  Nineveh,  he  returned  southward, 
having  gained  all  Syria,  and  at  one  stroke  recovered  the 
whole  of  the  old  Egyptian  conquests  of  the  Empire. 
Arriving  at  Ribleh  on  the  Orontes,  three  months  after 
the  battle  of  Megiddo,  he  sent  for  Josiah's  son,  Jehoa- 
haz,  whom  the  Judeans  had  placed  upon  his  father's 
throne,  and  threw  him  into  chains.  He  then  installed 
Eliakim,  another  son  of  Josiah,  as  king  of  Judah  under 
the  name  Jehoiakim,  and  imposed  upon  him  a  tribute 
of  one  hundred  talents  of  silver  and  one  of  gold.  The 
unfortunate  Jehoahaz  was  carried  to  Egypt  by  the 
Pharaoh  and  died  there.  It  is  characteristic  of  the 
altered  spirit  of  the  times  that  Necho  dedicated  to  the 
INIilesian  Branchidae  the  corselet  which  he  had  worn  on 
this  victorious  campaign, — of  course  in  recognition  of 
the  Greek  mercenaries,  to  whom  he  owed  his  successes. 
How  different  all  this  from  the  days  of  Amon's  suprem- 
acy, when  victory  came  from  him  alone  !  Fragments 
of  a  stela  dating  from  Necho's  supremacy  in  Syria  and 
bearing  his  name  in  hieroglyphic,  have  been  found  at 
Sidon  (Jer.,  XLVH,  1-5;'  PSBA,  XVI  (1894),  pp. 
91/.). 

402.  Necho's  new  Asiatic  empire  was  not  of  long 
duration.    In  less  than  two  years  the  combined  forces 


406         THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


of  Nabupalu9ur,  the  king  of  Babylon,  and  of  the  Medes 
under  Cyaxares,  had  accompHshed  the  overthrow  of 
Nineveh.  The  city  was  destroyed  and  the  nation 
utterly  annihilated  as  a  political  force.  The  two  con- 
querors divided  the  territory  made  available  by  their 
conquest,  the  Mede  taking  the  north  and  northeast  and 
the  Babylonian  the  south  and  southwest.  Thus  Syria 
fell  by  inheritance  to  Nabupalu9ur.  He  was  now  old 
and  unable  to  undertake  its  recovery;  but  he  quickly 
dispatched  his  son,  Nebuchadrezzar,  to  oppose  Necho. 
Hearing  of  his  coming,  Necho  was  wise  enough  to  collect 
his  forces  and  hasten  to  meet  him  at  the  northern 
frontier  on  the  Euphrates  in  605  B.  c.  At  Carchemish 
the  motley  army  of  the  Pharaoh  was  completely  routed 
by  the  Babylonians.  The  victory  was  so  decisive  that 
Necho  did  not  attempt  to  make  another  stand  or  to 
save  Palestine,  but  retreated  in  haste  to  the  Delta 
followed  by  Nebuchadrezzar.  The  ignominious  retreat 
of  Necho's  proud  army,  as  it  hurried  through  Palestine, 
created  a  profound  impression  among  the  Hebrews  of 
Judah,  and  Jeremiah,  who  was  interpreting  to  his  people 
in  Jerusalem  the  movements  of  the  nations,  hurled 
after  the  discomfited  Egyptians  his  burden  of  sarcasm 
and  derision.  Had  not  the  young  Kaldean  prince  now 
been  summoned  to  Babylon  by  the  death  of  his  father, 
the  conquest  of  Egypt,  or  at  least  its  further  humiliation, 
must  inevitably  have  followed.  Unwilling  to  prolong 
his  absence  from  the  capital  under  these  circumstances, 
Nebuchadrezzar  came  to  an  understanding  with  Necho, 
and  returned  home  to  assume  the  crown  of  Babylon. 
Thus  Syria-Palestine  became  Babylonian  dominion 
(Jer.,  XL VI,  1-12). 

403.  Necho's  agreement  with  Babylon  involved  the 
relinquishment  of  his  ambitious  designs  in  Asia.  He 


THE  FINAL  STRUGGLES 


407 


held  to  the  compact,  and  made  no  further  attempt  to 
maintain  Egyptian  sovereignty  there,  as  the  Hebrew 
annals  record:  ''And  the  king  of  Egypt  came  not  again 
any  more  out  of  his  land:  for  the  king  of  Babylon  had 
taken  from  the  brook  of  Egypt  unto  the  river  Euphrates, 
all  that  pertained  to  the  king  of  Egypt"  (II  Kings,  xxiv, 
7).  He  even  made  no  effort  to  intervene  when  Nebu- 
chadrezzar besieged  and  captured  Jerusalem  and 
deported  the  chief  families  of  Judah  in  596  B.C.  The 
Pharaoh's  energies  were  now  employed  in  the  further- 
ance of  his  father's  commercial  enterprises.  He  at- 
tempted to  re-excavate  the  ancient  canal  from  the  Delta, 
connecting  the  eastern  arm  of  the  Nile  with  the  Red 
Sea,  but  did  not  succeed.  Necho's  interest  in  maritime 
progress  is  further  evidenced  by  his  famous  exploring 
expedition.  He  dispatched  a  crew  of  Phoenician 
mariners  with  instructions  to  sail  around  Africa,  or  as 
Herodotus  calls  it,  Libya.  As  the  Egyptians  had  from 
the  earliest  time  supposed  their  land  to  be  surrounded 
by  sea,  the  Okeanos  of  the  Greeks,  with  which  the  Nile 
had  connection  in  the  south,  the  feat  of  the  Phoenicians, 
which  they  actually  accomplished  in  three  years,  excited 
no  surprise. 

404.  Psamtik  II,  who  followed  his  father  Necho  about 
593  B.  c,  either  regarded  Egypt's  prospects  in  Asia  as 
hopeless  or  continued  the  compact  of  his  father  with 
Babylon.  Unable  to  accomplish  anything  in  the  North, 
he  turned  his  attention  southward  and  attempted  the 
recovery  of  Nubia,  lost  to  Egypt  since  the  foundation 
of  the  Ethiopian  kingdom.  He  invaded  lower  Nubia, 
and  an  advanced  body  of  his  troops  pushed  up  almost 
to  the  second  cataract,  where  they  left  a  record  of  their 
visit  at  Abu  Simbel,  in  a  Greek  inscription  on  one  of  the 
colossi  of  Ramses  II,  before  his  great  temple  there 


408         THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


Although,  as  we  have  before  remarked,  this  invasion 
doubtless  furnished  the  Ethiopians  a  further  reason  for 
transferring  their  capital  above  the  cataracts  to  Meroe, 
yet  the  results  of  the  expedition  were  probably  not 
lasting,  and  Lower  Nubia  never  became  an  integral 
part  of  the  Saite  kingdom  (Note  XII;  BAR,  IV,  988  A- 
988  J). 

405.  Meanwhile  the  Saites  were  still  casting  longing 
eyes  upon  the  ancient  dominions  of  Egypt  in  Asia,  and 
when  Apries  (the  Ha'abre*  of  the  Egyptians,  or  Hophra* 
of  the  Hebrews)  succeeded  his  father  Psamtik  II  early 
in  588  B.  c,  he  immediately  resumed  the  old  designs  of 
his  house  to  recover  them.  Already  under  Necho,  in 
597  B.  c,  as  we  have  seen,  Nebuchadrezzar  had  been 
obliged  to  advance  on  Jerusalem  in  consequence  of  the 
rebellion  of  Jehoiachin,  an  event  in  which  Necho  may 
have  secretly  had  a  hand.  The  next  year  the  unhappy 
city  capitulated,  and  some  nine  or  ten  thousand  of  the 
better  class  were  deported  to  Babylonia,  leaving  only 
"  the  poorest  sort  of  the  people  of  the  land.'*  Jehoiachin's 
uncle,  Zedekiah,  was  appointed  by  Nebuchadrezzar  as 
king  over  the  afflicted  land.  When  he  had  been  ruling 
nine  years  we  find  him  in  revolt  against  Babylon.  The 
reasons  for  this  foolish  policy  are  quite  evident.  The 
date  of  his  rebellion  coincides  with  the  accession  of 
Apries.  Tyre  and  Sidon,  Moab  and  Ammon  had  also 
sent  their  emissaries  to  the  Judean  king,  and  when  the 
weighty  influence  of  Apries  also  fell  into  the  scales  the 
vacillating  Zedekiah  was  no  longer  able  to  withstand, 
and  he  half-heartedly  joined  the  rest  in  casting  off  the 
sovereignty  of  Babylon.  The  events  formerly  following 
similar  revolts  from  Assyrian  authority  were  now  re- 
enacted  under  the  Babylonians;  the  allies  were  unable 
to  act  quickly  in  concert.    Indeed  Apries  made  it  ini- 


THE  FINAL  STRUGGLES 


409 


possible  that  they  should  do  so  by  attacking  Tyre  and 
Sidon.  He  dispatched  an  expedition  to  attempt  the 
conquest  of  the  north  by  sea,  perhaps  hoping  to  meet 
Nebuchadrezzar  on  the  Euphrates  as  his  grandfather 
Necho  had  done.  He  fought  a  victorious  naval  engage- 
ment with  the  Tyrians  and  Cyprians  and  landed  enough 
troops  to  take  Sidon,  whereupon  the  other  Phoenician 
cities  yielded.  It  is  possible  also  that  he  hoped  thus  to 
divert  Nebuchadrezzar  from  the  south  where  a  portion 
of  his  army  had  appeared  early  in  587,  or  to  cut  off  this 
southern  army  now  operating  against  Jerusalem;  and 
if  so,  the  movement  was  brilliantly  conceived.  But  it 
was  never  pushed  far  enough  to  accomplish  anything 
inland;  and  Nebuchadrezzar  wisely  fixed  his  base  of 
operations  well  northward,  at  Ribleh  on  the  Orontes, 
where  he  was  able  to  contemplate  the  Egyptian  opera- 
tions without  concern.  His  enemies  were  exhausting 
themselves  against  each  other,  and  had  Apries  advanced 
inland  Nebuchadrezzar  could  have  quickly  confronted 
him  with  a  force  from  Ribleh.  It  is  perhaps  during  this 
brief  supremacy  of  the  Pharaoh  in  Phoenicia  that  we 
should  place  the  fragmentary  Egyptian  monuments, 
pieces  of  stone  statues,  altars  and  bits  of  inscribed  stone 
from  the  Saite  age,  found  by  Renan  at  Arvad,  Tyre  and 
Sidon.  Now  also  the  Pharaoh  apparently  controlled 
for  a  time  a  domain  in  Lebanon  (II  Kings,  xxiv,  15; 
Diodorus,  I,  68;  Rev.  arch,  n.  s.,  VII,  1863';  pp.  194- 
198;  BAR,  IV,  970). 

406.  When  in  the  spring  of  586  B.C.  the  troops  of 
Apries  at  last  appeared  in  the  south  to  threaten  the 
Babylonian  besiegers  of  Jerusalem,  they  brought  the 
beleaguered  city  a  brief  moment's  respite  only ;  for  the 
Egyptian  forces  again  showed  themselves  unable  to 
cope  with  the  armies  of  Asia.    Indeed,  it  is  possible  that 


410         THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


Apries  relinquished  his  claims  in  Palestine  without  a 
blow.  Thus  the  predictions  of  Jeremiah,  who  had 
constantly  proclaimed  the  folly  of  depending  upon  assist- 
ance from  Egypt,  were  brilliantly  confirmed.  In  the 
summer  of  586  b.  c.  Jerusalem  fell ;  it  was  razed  to  the 
ground  and  the  inglorious  Zedekiah,  having  been  taken 
to  Nebuchadrezzar's  camp  at  RibFeh,  was  blinded,  after 
witnessing  the  slaughter  of  his  sons.  The  Judean 
nation  was  annihilated,  but  no  decisive  blow  had  been 
struck  which  might  cripple  the  power  of  Egypt,  the 
instigator  of  the  trouble.  It  was  not  for  many  years  that 
Nebuchadrezzar  was  able  to  attempt  anything  in  this 
direction;  his  first  obligation  being  the  punishment  of 
Tyre,  which  maintained  itself  for  thirteen  years,  finally 
yielding  in  573  B.  c. 

407.  In  spite  of  ill  success  in  Asia,  Apries  enjoyed 
unbounded  prosperity  in  the  internal  administration 
of  his  realm,  and  the  kingdom  flourished  as  only  under 
his  great  grandfather,  its  founder.  From  the  west  also 
he  received  the  revenues  of  the  Oasis  region  and  in 
the  Northern  Oasis  his  official  Wahibrenofer  built  a 
temple.  But  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  his  wealth  and 
splendour  a  tragic  end  was  awaiting  him  from  an  un- 
expected quarter.  He  found  great  difficulty  in  bridling 
his  troops,  of  whatever  nationality.  On  one  occasion 
the  Libyans,  Greeks  and  Syrians  attempted  to  desert 
and  migrate  to  Nubia,  as  in  the  days  of  Psamtik  I  a 
body  of  the  warrior-class  had  done.  How  many  were 
involved  in  this  revolt  under  Apries  it  is  impossible  to 
establish,  but  they  were  sufficiently  numerous  to  render 
the  king  very  apprehensive,  and  the  record  of  the  event 
distinctly  states  that  "his  majesty  feared."  Another 
misunderstanding  with  the  native  warrior-class  did  not 
end  so  happily.  The  new  Greek  settlement  at  Cyrene 


THE  FINAL  STRUGGLES 


4il 


was  growing  into  a  flourishing  state  and  encroach- 
ing upon  the  Libyans  who  lay  between  Cyrene  and 
Egypt.  Apries  deemed  it  wise  to  check  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Greek  colony  and  sent  to  the  aid  of  the 
Libyans  a  body  of  Egyptian  troops  naturally  not  in- 
cluding among  them  any  of  his  Greek  mercenaries. 
Despising  their  adversaries,  the  Egyptians  advanced 
in  careless  confidence,  but  were  totally  defeated  and 
almost  annihilated  by  the  C}Tenian  Greeks.  Smarting 
under  their  discomfiture  they  were  so  filled  with  resent- 
ment toward  Apries  that  they  concluded  he  had  dis- 
patched them  against  Cyrene  with  the  purpose  of  ridding 
himself  of  them.  A  revolt  of  the  warrior-class  followed, 
which  swelled  to  dangerous  proportions.  Apries  there- 
upon commissioned  one  of  his  nobles,  Ahmose,  or 
Amasis,  as  Herodotus  calls  him,  a  relative  of  the  royal 
house,  to  conciliate  the  revolters.  So  skilfully  did 
Amasis  manipulate  the  situation  that  the  disaffected 
soldiery  soon  proclaimed  him  king,  and  a  messenger 
of  Apries,  sent  to  recall  the  traitor,  was  dismissed  with 
insult  and  contumely.  Herodotus  narrates  that  a 
battle  now  ensued  in  which  the  Greek  mercenaries  of 
Apries,  heavily  outnumbered  by  the  native  troops  of 
Amasis,  were  beaien  and  Apries  taken  prisoner.  It  is 
possible  that  he  is  here  confusing  the  situation  with  the 
later  battle  which,  as  we  know  from  a  contemporary 
document,  occurred  between  the  forces  of  the  two 
rivals.  However  this  may  be,  Amasis,  while  treating 
Apries  with  kindness  and  not  yet  dethroning  him,  laid 
a  vigourous  hand  upon  the  sceptre.  A  coregency  en- 
sued in  which  Apries  doubtless  played  but  a  feeble  part; 
and  a  monument  or  two  showing  the  two  rulers  together 
has  survived.  Alongside  the  cartouche,  which  he  now 
assumed,  Amasis  continued  to  bear  the  old  titles  be- 


412         THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


longing  to  his  former  less  exalted  offices.  In  the  third 
year  of  the  coregency,  however,  a  struggle  between  the 
two  regents  arose.  Apries,  as  Herodotus  knew,  gained 
the  adherence  of  the  Greeks,  and  with  an  army  of  these 
mercenaries,  supported  by  a  fleet,  advanced  upon  Sais 
from  the  North.  Some  time  after  the  resulting  battle, 
which  went  against  Apries,  he  was  slain  by  his  pursuers. 
Amasis  gave  him  honourable  burial,  befitting  a  king, 
among  his  ancestors  in  Sais,  and  established  for  him 
mortuary  offerings  endowed  with  a  liberal  revenue 
(BAR,  IV,  989;  999  /.;  996  /.;  KSGW,  1900,  p.  226). 

408.  It  might  have  been  supposed  that  Amasis,  who 
owed  his  crown  to  an  ebullition  of  national  feeling,  as 
opposed  to  the  partiality  shown  the  Greeks,  would  now 
have  evinced  his  appreciation  of  this  indebtedness  in  a 
marked  reaction  against  foreign  influence;  but  for  this 
he  was  too  sagacious  a  statesman.  While  seeming  to 
curtail  the  privileges  of  the  Greeks,  he  really  gave  to 
them  all  they  wanted.  The  Greek  merchants,  who  had 
hitherto  enjoyed  unlimited  latitude  in  their  selection  of  a 
field  for  their  merchandizing,  were  now  not  allowed  to 
land  anywhere  in  the  Delta,  save  at  a  city  appointed 
for  them  by  Amasis.  On  the  Canopic  mouth  of  the 
Nile  in  the  western  Delta,  at  a  place  where  there  was 
probably  an  older  settlement  of  but  slight  importance, 
Amasis  founded  the  new  city  of  Naucratis  as  a  home 
and  market  for  the  Greeks,  which  they  speedily  made 
the  most  important  commercial  centre  of  Egypt,  if  not 
of  the  whole  Mediterranean.  It  was  in  all  essentials  a 
Greek  city,  and  the  wares  which  were  manufactured 
within  its  walls  were,  with  but  slight  exceptions,  in  no 
sense  Egyptian.  The  busy  life  which  throbbed  in  its 
thronging  markets  and  factories,  the  constitution  of  the 
city  and  its  daily  administration  were  just  such  as  pre- 


THE  FINAL  STRUGGLES 


413 


vailed  in  any  industrial  and  commercial  Greek  com- 
munity of  the  mother  country.  All  the  Greeks  were 
concerned  more  or  less  in  its  success  and  prosperity. 
Hence  when  the  chief  temple  of  Naucratis  was  to  be 
erected,  the  Ionian  cities  of  Chios,  Teos,  Phocsea  and 
Clazomense,  with  Rhodes,  Cnidus,  Halicarnassus  and 
Phaselis  of  the  Dorians,  and  the  ^olian  Mitylene, 
together  contributed  a  common  fund  to  erect  the 
Hellenium,  a  large  and  stately  sanctuary,  with  a 
spacious  enclosure,  protected  by  a  massive  wall. 
The  powerful  states  of  ^Egina,  Miletus  and  Samos, 
however,  were  able  to  possess  each  a  temple  of  their 
own.  Thus  while  apparently  restricted,  the  Greeks 
were  still  enjoying  the  greatest  privileges  in  Egypt,  nor 
did  the  regulations  of  Amasis  ever  impress  them  as 
hostile  to  their  welfare  in  his  land.  When  an  embassy 
of  the  Delphians  approached  him  for  a  contribution 
toward  the  erection  of  their  temple,  which  had  been 
burned  (548  B.C.),  he  responded  liberally.  He  sent 
gifts  likewise  to  the  temples  of  Lindos,  Samos  and 
Gyrene,  and  presented  a  magnificent  corselet  to  the 
Spartans.  He  thus  maintained  close  relations  with  the 
Greek  world  in  Europe  and  Asia,  and  with  the  wealthy 
and  powerful  Polycrates  of  Samos  he  sustained  a 
friendship  which  amounted  to  an  alliance.  He  was 
always  very  popular  with  the  Greeks,  both  at  home  and 
abroad,  and  many  tales  of  his  career  and  personal 
character  circulated  among  them. 

409.  Unfortunately  it  is  almost  solely  in  his  dealings 
with  the  Greeks  that  we  know  anything  of  the  achieve- 
ments of  Amasis.  He  did  not  neglect  his  interests 
among  the  Egyptians,  as  in  view  of  the  catastrophe 
which  had  overtaken  Apries,  he  was  not  likely  to  do. 
He  built  splendid  additions  to  the  temples  of  Sais  and 


414         THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


Memphis,  and  a  vast  monolithic  chapel  from  the 
quarries  of  the  first  cataract,  which  he  set  up  in  Sais, 
excited  the  admiration  of  Herodotus.  The  people 
enjoyed  the  greatest  prosperity  and  Herodotus  avers 
that  the  land  contained  at  that  time  twenty  thousand 
cities."  He  again  revised  the  system  of  laws,  one  of 
which,  demanding  that  every  inhabitant  "should  an- 
nually declare  to  the  governor  of  his  district  by  what 
means  he  maintained  himself,"  was  adopted  by  Solon 
on  his  visit  to  Egypt,  and  enforced  at  Athens.  But 
eventually  his  evident  liking  for  the  Greeks  could  not 
escape  the  notice  of  the  Egyptian  party.  He  had  two 
frontier  forts  in  the  northeastern  Delta,  and  from 
Daphnse,  one  of  these  two,  he  was  obliged  to  transfer 
the  Greek  garrison  stationed  there  to  Memphis,  and  thus 
ensure  the  safety  of  the  latter  strong  and  populous  city, 
so  near  his  residence  at  Sais.  He  was  finally  compelled  to 
throw  off  the  mask,  and  for  the  support  of  his  mercenary 
army  and  fleet  to  draw  upon  the  fortunes  and  revenues 
of  the  temples.  It  was  no  longer  compatible  with 
modern  statesmanship  that  the  priesthoods  should  be 
permitted  to  absorb  so  large  a  proportion  of  the  resources 
of  the  land.  A  navy  such  as  Egypt  now  possessed,  and 
the  large  body  of  mercenaries  in  his  army,  drew  heavily 
upon  the  treasury  of  Amasis;  and  his  curtailment  of 
the  temple  incomes  was  inevitable.  It  was  the  begin- 
ning of  still  more  serious  inroads  upon  the  temple- 
estates  in  the  Persian  period,  resulting  under  the 
Ptolemies  in  great  reduction  of  the  priestly  revenues 
and  the  taxation  of  the  temple-property.  Politically 
impotent,  the  priesthoods  could  only  swallow  their 
discontent,  which,  however,  gradually  permeated  all 
the  upper  classes.  But  Amasis,  with  a  cleverness  which 
became  proverbial,  was  always  able  so  to  manipulate 


THE  FINAL  STRUGGLES 


415 


the  forces  at  his  command  that  the  Egyptian  party 
found  itseK  helpless  and  obliged  to  accede  to  his 
wishes  (BAR,  IV,  1014;  Rev.  ^gypt.,  I,  59  fj.;  Ill,  105). 

410.  The  good  understanding  which  Amasis  con- 
stantly maintained  with  the  Greeks  made  him  secure 
upon  the  Mediterranean.  In  the  west  he  controlled 
the  oases  and  erected  a  temple  in  the  Northern  Oasis; 
but  he  was  not  so  fortunate  in  his  relations  with  the 
east.  His  usurpation  of  the  crown  had  furnished 
Nebuchadrezzar  with  the  coveted  opportunity  of 
humiliating  Egypt,  which  the  Kaldean  naturally  sup- 
posed would  have  been  weakened  by  the  internal 
dissensions  incident  to  such  a  revolution.  Already 
before  the  death  of  Apries  in  568  B.  c,  the  army  of  the 
Kaldeans  appeared  on  the  Delta  frontier,  but  the 
course  of  the  subsequent  operations  is  unknown.  It  is 
not  probable  that  Nebuchadrezzar  purposed  the  con- 
quest of  Egypt,  which  was  now  in  a  condition  very 
different  from  the  state  of  impotent  anarchy  in  which 
the  Ass}Tians  had  found  it  under  the  Ethiopians.  In 
any  case,  he  did  not  achieve  the  conquest  of  the  country; 
and  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel,  who  were  awaiting  with 
feverish  longing  the  complete  overthrow  of  the  hated 
Pharaoh's  kingdom,  must  have  been  sorely  disappointed 
that  the  catastrophe  which  they  had  confidently  pre- 
dicted to  their  countrymen  failed  to  occur.  As  a  result 
of  the  campaign,  however,  Amasis  was  obliged  to  re- 
nounce any  ambitions  which  he  may  have  cherished  for 
the  conquest  of  Syria-Palestine.  His  strong  navy, 
nevertheless,  enabled  him  completely  to  subdue  Cyprus, 
which  he  organized  as  an  Egyptian  dependency,  paying 
tribute  to  him.  His  naval  strength,  which  now  became 
formidable,  was  the  foundation  of  the  sea-p>ower,  which 
under  the  Ptolemies,  made  Egypt  the  dominant  state 


416         THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


on  the  Mediterranean  (KSGW,  1900,  p.  226;  Jer., 
xliii.,  8-13;  Ezek.,  xl,  10-18). 

411.  Meanwhile  Nebuchadrezzar  had  died  (562  b.  c), 
and  the  disappearance  of  his  powerful  personality  dis- 
tinctly diminished  the  prestige  of  the  Babylonian 
Empire.  As  internal  dissensions  arose,  the  alliance 
with  the  Medes  was  no  longer  possible,  and  when 
finally  Cyrus  of  Anshan,  a  Persian,  succeeded  in  sup- 
planting the  Median  dynasty  by  the  overthrow  of  the 
Median  king,  Astyages  (550  B.C.),  the  position  of 
Babylon  was  critical  in  the  extreme.  The  extraordi- 
nary career  of  Cyrus  was  now  a  spectacle  upon  which 
all  eyes  in  the  west  were  fastened  with  wonder  and  alarm. 
Amasis  was  fully  alive  to  the  new  danger  which  threat- 
ened his  kingdom  in  common  with  all  the  other  powers 
of  the  West.  He  therefore  in  547  b.  c.  made  common 
cause  with  them,  forming  a  league  with  Croesus  of 
Lydia,  and  the  Spartans  in  the  west;  and  in  the  east 
with  Nabuna'id  of  1  Babylon.  Before  the  allies  could 
move  together,  Croesus  was  defeated  and  dethroned 
(546-545  B.C.);  and  the  overflowing  energies  of  the 
new  conqueror  and  his  people,  fresh  and  unspent  for 
centuries  among  their  native  hills,  were  then  directed 
upon  Babylon,  which  fell  in  539  B.C.  Amasis  was 
powerless  to  check  their  progress,  while  the  vast 
Persian  Empire  was  being  raised  upon  the  ruins  of  the 
valley  of  the  two  rivers  and  the  kingdoms  of  Asia  Minor. 
It  was  inevitable  that  the  new  world  power  should  now 
look  toward  Egypt,  and  the  last  years  of  Amasis  must 
have  been  darkened  with  anxious  forebodings  as  he 
contemplated  the  undisputed  supremacy  of  Cyrus. 
But  he  was  spared  the  fate  of  Croesus  for,  when  he  died, 
late  in  526  or  early  in  525  b.  c,  the  impending  catastro- 
phe had  not  yet  overtaken  his  kingdom. 


THE  FINAL  STRUGGLES 


417 


412.  Amasis  had  ample  opportunity  during  his  long 
reign  of  forty-four  years  to  display  his  qualities  as  a 
statesman.  With  his  fertility  of  resource  and  never- 
failing  cleverness,  be  belonged  to,  and  was  largely  the 
product  of,  the  Greek  world.  His  nature  was  funda- 
mentally opposed  to  the  conventional  and  sacerdotal 
conception  of  the  Pharaoh,  which  so  dominated  the 
ancient  kingship  that  its  monuments,  largely  of  priestly 
origin,  force  all  the  Pharaohs  into  the  same  mould,  and 
depict  them  as  rigid  and  colourless  forms,  each  like  all 
the  others,  with  the  same  monotonous  catalogue  of 
divine  attributes.  These  formal  and  priestly  traditions 
of  what  constituted  a  Pharaoh  were  treated  with  scant 
consideration  by  Amasis.  ^^^len  he  had  devoted  the 
morning  hours  to  the  transaction  of  public  business,  he 
loved  to  throw  aside  the  pomp  and  formalities  of  state, 
and,  gathering  at  his  table  a  few  choice  friends,  he  gave 
himself  without  reserve  to  the  enjoyment  of  con- 
viviality, in  which  wine  played  no  small  part.  A 
thorough  man  of  the  world  of  his  day,  not  too  refined, 
open  to  every  influence  and  to  every  pleasure  which  did 
not  endanger  his  position,  he  showed  himself  neverthe- 
less a  statesman  of  the  first  rank.  Of  his  wit  and 
humour  the  Greeks  told  many  a  tale,  while  the  light 
and  skilful  touch  with  which  he  manipulated  men 
and  affairs  won  their  constant  admiration.  But  the 
character  and  policies  of  Amasis  clearly  disclose  the  fact 
that  the  old  Egyptian  w^orld,  whose  career  we  have  been 
following,  has  already  ceased  to  be.  Its  vitality,  which 
flickered  again  into  a  flame,  in  the  art  of  the  Saitic  age, 
is  now  quenched  forever.  The  Saitic  state  is  but  an 
artificial  structure,  skilfully  built  up  and  sustained  by 
sagacious  rulers,  but  the  national  career,  the  char- 
acteristics of  which  were  determined  by  the  initiative 


418         THE  RESTORATION  AND  THE  END 


and  vital  force  of  the  nation  itself  had  long  ago  ended. 
The  fall  of  Egypt  and  the  close  of  her  characteristic 
history,  were  already  an  irrevocable  fact  long  before 
the  relentless  Cambyses  knocked  at  the  doors  of  Pelu- 
sium.  The  Saitic  state  was  a  creation  of  rulers  who 
looked  into  the  future,  who  belonged  to  it,  and  had 
little  or  no  connection  with  the  past.  They  were  as 
essentially  non-Egyptian  as  the  Ptolemies  who  followed 
the  Persians.  The  Persian  conquest  in  525  b.  c, 
which  deprived  Psamtik  III,  the  son  of  Amasis  of  his 
throne  and  kingdom,  was  but  a  change  of  rulers,  a 
purely  external  fact.  And  if  a  feeble  burst  of  national 
feeling  enabled  this  or  that  Egyptian  to  thrust  off  the 
Persian  yoke  for  a  brief  period,  the  movement  may  be 
likened  to  the  convulsive  contractions  which  sometimes 
lend  momentary  motion  to  limbs  from  which  conscious 
life  has  long  departed.  With  the  fall  of  Psamtik  III, 
Egypt  belonged  to  a  new  world,  toward  the  development 
of  which  she  had  contributed  much,  but  in  which  she 
could  no  longer  play  an  active  part.  Her  great  work 
was  done,  and  unable,  like  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  to 
disappear  from  the  scene,  she  lived  on  her  artificial  life 
for  a  time  under  the  Persians  and  the  Ptolemies,  ever 
sinking,  till  she  became  merely  the  granary  of  Rome, 
to  be  visited  as  a  land  of  ancient  marvels  by  wealthy 
Greeks  and  Romans,  who  have  left  their  names  scratched 
here  and  there  upon  her  hoary  monuments,  just  as  the 
modern  tourists,  admiring  the  same  marvels,  still  con- 
tinue to  do.  But  her  unwarlike  people,  still  making 
Egypt  a  garden  of  the  world,  have  verified  the  words 
of  the  Hebrew  seer,  "There  shall  be  no  more  a  prince 
out  of  the  land  of  Egypt"  (Ezek.,  XXX,  13). 


CHROXOLOGICAL  SUMMARY 


(N.  B. — All  dates  with  asterisks  are  astronomically  fixed.) 


Predynastic  kingdoms  already  flourishing   4500  b.  c 

Introduction  of  calendar  and  earliest  fixed  date  in 

history  *4241  " 

Kingdoms  of  Upper  and  Lower  Egypt  probably  flour- 
ishing by   4000  " 

Accession  of  Menes  and  beginning  of  dynasties   3400  " 


FIRST  AND  SECOND  DYX,\STIES — 3400-2980  B.  C 

Eighteen  Kings,  420  years,  ruling  at  Thinis.  Tombs  in  Abydos 
and  vicinity.  Wars  with  Libyans,  with  Beduin  of  East,  with 
Delta.    Mining  in  Sinai.    Stone  masonry  and  arch  introduced. 

OLD  KINGDOM— 2980-2475  B.  C. 

THIRD  DYNASTY— 2980-2900  B.  C. 

Zoser  to  Snefru,  80  years,  ruling  at  Memphis.  Zoser  builds  ter- 
raced pyramid  of  Sakkara,  the  oldest  existing  large  stone 
building;  continues  mining  in  Sinai;  wise  man  Imhotep. 
Snefru  builds  first  real  pyramids:  one  at  Medum,  another  at 
Dahshur;  sends  fleet  to  Lebanon  {earliest  known  sea-voyage 
and  expedition  into  Syria  in  history);  continues  mining  in 
Siuai. 


420 


CHRONOLOGICAL  SUMMARY 


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NOTES  ON  RECENT  DISCOVERIES 


Note  L — Since  my  attempt  to  reconstruct  the  Eleventh  Dy- 
nasty (Abhandlungen  der  Berl.  Akad.,  1904,  pp.  156-161;  and 
AJSL,  XXI,  163  ^. ;  later  and  better  BAR,  I,  415-419),  impor- 
tant new  docmnents  have  turned  up,  which  show  that  my  recon- 
struction was  in  several  places  premature  and  based  on  too  little 
evidence.  According  to  a  new  stela  now  in  Cairo  (see  Maspero, 
Rev.  critique,  Nov.,  1905;  Sethe,  AZ,  42,  132-134),  an  impor- 
tant official  named  Henu  served  under  the  following  kings  in 
succession: 

1.  Horus  Wahenekh-Intef  ("many  years"). 

2.  Long  lacuna. 

3.  His  predecessor's  son  Horus  Senekh  ,  son  of  Re, 

Mentuhotep. 

A  second  stela  in  the  British  Museum  (Naville  &  Hall,  The 
Xlth  Dynasty  Temple  at  Deir  el-Bahari,  part  I,  1907,  p.  1), 
gives  the  same  succession  completely  as  follows: 

1.  Horus  Wahenekh-Intef. 

2.  Horus  Nakhtneb-Tepnefer-Intef. 

3.  Horus  Senekhibtowe-Mentuhotep. 

This  gives  us  a  new  Mentuhotep.  Furthermore,  the  continua- 
tion of  the  excavations  behind  Niohepetre-Mentuhotep's  temple 
at  Der  el-Bahri,  shows  that  Nibhotep-Mentuhotep  (of  Lepsius) 
was  a  misreading  of  Nibhapetre-Mentuhotep,  another  new  Men- 
tuhotep (replacing  Nibhotep),  whose  tomb  lies  behind  Nibhepetre- 
Mentuhotep's  temple,  sho-wing  that  he  was  a  predecessor  of 
Nibhepetre.  The  Turin  Papyrus  and  the  development  of  the 
titularies  of  these  five  Mentuhoteps  give  us  their  probable  order 
as  below.  They  were  preceded  by  the  two  Intefs,  1  and  2  above. 
Thus  we  have  seven  kings  who  may  possibly  have  been  preceded 
by  a  Mentuhotep,  and  one  or  two  (?)  Intefs  who  follow  ( ? )  the 
nomarch  in  the  erratic  Karnak  list.  Sethe  has,  however,  now 
shown  (AZ,  42,  132  /.)  that  the  Turin  Papyrus  contained  but  six 
kings  in  this  dynasty.  I  have  drawn  some  of  this  matter  from  a 
full  reexamination  of  the  materials  by  Eduard  Meyer  (Abh.  der 
Berl.  Akad.,  Jan.,  1908).  The  dynasty  thus  reconstructed  is  as 
follows: 


439 


440  NOTES  ON  RECENT  DISCOVERIES 


ELEVENTH  DYNASTY,  2160-2000  B.  C. 

(Preceded  by  Nomarch  Intef  and  possibly  a  Mentuhotep  and 
another  Intef.) 

1.  Horus  Wahenekh-Intef,  50  +  X  years. 

2.  Horus  Nakhtneb-Tepnefer-Intef,  X  years. 

3.  Horus  Senekhibtowe-Mentuhotep,  X  years. 

4.  Nibhapetre-Mentuhotep,  X  years, 

5.  Nibtowere-Mentuhotep,  2  +  X  years. 

6.  Nibhepetre-Mentuhotep,  46  +  ^  years. 

7.  Senekhkere-Mentuhotep,  8  +  X  years. 

Known  length,  160  years. 

Note  II. — ^The  two  huge  colossi  on  the  Island  of  Argo,  above 
the  third  cataract,  do  not  belong  to  a  Sebekhotep,  as  all  the 
histories  state,  so  far  as  I  know  (including  my  own,  p.  212  and 
Fig.  99).  These  colossi  are  late  Nubian,  dating  centuries  after 
the  separation  of  Nubia  and  Egypt.  The  only  statue  of  Sebek- 
hotep on  the  island  is  a  small  life-size  sitting  figure  of  the  king  in 
granite,  which  I  had  the  privilege  of  inspecting  this  year  (1907). 
It  weighs  far  less  than  the  Soleb  lions  of  Amenhotep  III  (now  in 
the  British  Museum),  which  were  transported  by  a  late  Nubian 
king  from  Soleb  to  Napata  at  the  foot  of  the  fourth  cataract 
(BAR,  II,  896,  note  d).  In  view  of  the  total  collapse  of  the 
kingdom  after  the  fall  of  the  Twelfth  Dynasty,  there  cannot  be  the 
slightest  doubt,  that  this  easily  transportable  statue  of  Sebek- 
hotep was  carried  by  some  late  Nubian  king  from  some  lower 
Nubian  temple  to  Argo,  just  above  the  third  cataract,  a  feat 
involving  far  less  distance  and  much  less  weight  than  the  transport 
of  the  Soleb  lions.  It  is  thus  evident  that  this  Sebekhotep  did  not 
erect  the  monument  on  Argo,  and  we  are  relieved  of  the  long 
current,  but  anomalous,  conclusion,  that  a  king  of  the  dark  age, 
after  the  fall  of  the  Twelfth  Dynasty,  accomplished  a  great  ex- 
tension of  the  kingdom  southward. 

Note  III. — The  siege  of  Sharuhen  which  I  supposed  from  the 
worn  Berlin  squeeze  to  have  lasted  six  years  (BAR,  II,  13;  BH,  p. 
227),  has  been  shown  by  Sethe's  examination  of  the  original  to 
have  lasted  three  years. 

Note  IV. — The  inscription  recording  an  Asiatic  war,  formerly 
attributed  to  Thutmose  II,  has  been  shown  by  Sethe's  examina- 
tion of  the  original  at  Der  el-Bahri  to  belong  to  Thutmose  I. 


NOTES  ON  RECENT  DISCOVERIES  441 


Note  V. — The  appearance  of  the  Kheta  under  Thutmose  III 
has  hitherto  al\\'ays  been  the  earliest  occurrence  of  the  Hittites. 
Mr.  King  of  the  British  Museum  has  now  found  evidence  in 
Babylonian  records  of  an  invasion  of  Babylonia  in  1750  B.  c.  by 
a  people,  the  reading  of  whose  name  coincides  with  that  of  the 
Kheta  (KSEH,  II,  72,  148). 

Note  VI. — The  Nubian  city  of  Ikhnaton  was  found  by  the 
author  in  1907  at  Sesebi,  at  the  foot  of  the  third  cataract,  where 
the  columns  of  Seti  I  were  obser\^ed  to  bear  palimpsest  reliefs. 
Through  the  reliefs  of  Seti  I,  the  older  records  of  Ikhnaton  can 
still  with  some  difficulty  be  discerned  (See  the  author's  essay  in 
the  Independent,  Jan.  16,  1908),  proving  the  present  temple  of 
Sesebi  to  have  been  built  as  a  temple  of  Aton  by  Ikhnaton. 

Note  VII. — The  inscription  in  the  rear  of  the  first  hall  at  Abu 
Simbel,  published  as  belonging  to  Ramses  II's  first  year,  I  have 
found  by  examination  of  the  original,  does  not  belong  to  Ramses 
11.  Hence  the  Abu  Simbel  temple  was  not  begun  by  Seti  I,  as 
this  inscription  led  me  to  think  (BAR,  III,  495;  BH,  415). 

Note  VIII. — A  scarab  of  Shabaka,  recently  offered  to  the 
Berlin  Museum  for  sale,  has  now  been  published  by  Maspero 
(Annales  du  Sen-ice  des  Antiquites,  VII,  22).  It  contains  an 
evident  reference  to  the  Asiatic  war,  in  the  inscription  which  it 
bears.    This  inscription  reads: 

"Shabaka,  given  life,  beloved  of  Amon  more  than  any  king  who 
has  been  since  the  foundation  of  the  earth,  he  has  slain  those 
rebelling  against  him  in  South  and  North,  in  all  countries;  the 
Sand-Dwellers  (Beduin)  revolting  against  him  have  fallen  by  his 
blade.  They  come  of  themselves  as  living  captives,  each  one  of 
them  urging  his  brother,  because  he  has  done  excellent  things  for 
his  ( ?)  father,  because  he  so  much  loved  him," 

The  mention  of  the  Beduin  is  of  course  a  reminiscence  of 
Shabaka 's  Asiatic  war.  The  scarab  is  said  to  have  been  found 
in  Asia. 

Note  IX. — Quite  unexpectedly  an  inscription  of  Tanutamon's 
eighth  year  has  just  turned  up  at  Thebes  (Legrain,  Annales  du 
Service  des  Antiquites,  VII,  226).  As  he  of  course  numbered  his 
years  from  the  beginning  of  his  coregency  (663  b.  c),  he  therefore 
"held  Thebes  until  655  b.  c.  This  is  the  year  before  Psamtik  I 
established  his  daughter  as  sacerdotal  princess  of  Thebes. 


442  NOTES  ON  RECENT  DISCOVERIES 


Evidently  this  establishment  of  his  daughter  by  Psamtik  I  fol- 
lowed directly  upon  Tanutamon's  death  or  retirement,  in  the 
same  year.  The  fact  that  the  Nubians  returned  to  Thebes  after 
its  sack  by  the  Assyrians  in  661  B.  c,  and  held  it  for  at  least  six, 
and  perhaps  seven,  years  longer,  places  the  close  of  the  Nubian 
supremacy,  and  their  final  retirement  from  Egypt  (655-654  c), 
in  a  less  ignominious  light. 

Note  X. — The  excavations  of  Winckler  at  Boghaz-koi  in  Asia 
Minor,  east  of  the  Kisil-irmak  (Halys),  five  days'  journey  east 
of  Angora,  in  1906  and  1907,  have  shown  that  this  place  was 
the  seat  of  Hittite  power.  In  the  numerous  cuneiform  tablets 
which  he  found  there,  some  in  Babylonian  and  some  in  Hittite, 
this  place  is  called  "Khatti."  Here  Winckler  found  the  cunei- 
form original  of  the  treaty  of  peace  between  Ramses  II  and  the 
Hittite  king  Khetasar  (cuneiform  Hattusil).  (See  Winckler's  re- 
port, OLZ,  15th  Dec,  1906;  MDOG,  No.  35.)  The  recent  evi- 
dence of  a  Hittite  invasion  of  Babylonia  about  1750  B.  c.  (King, 
KSEH,  II,  148)  shows  that  there  was  a  great  expansion  of  Hittite 
power  at  just  the  time  when  the  Hyksos  were  entering  Egypt. 
The  Hyksos  empire  was  thus  thrown  back  upon  Egypt.  Or  was 
the  Hyksos  invasion  of  Egypt  itself  Hittite  ? 

Note  XI. — Recently  two  reliefs  now  in  the  Cairo  Museum  have 
been  put  forward  by  W.  Max  Miiller  (Publ.  No.  53,  Carnegie 
Inst.,  Washington,  PL  I-IT,  pp.  5-11)  as  showing  intercourse  be- 
tween Egypt  and  the  ^Egean,  as  well  as  Mesopotamia  in  the  Sixth 
Dynasty  or  "about  (and  'before')  2500  B.C."  The  first  relief 
depicts  a  row  of  men  bearing  blocks  of  tin  (dhty)  and  is  dated  by 
Miiller  on  grounds  of  style  in  the  Sixth  Dynasty.  The  accom- 
panying inscription,  however,  writes  the  y  in  dhty  with  the  two 
oblique  strokes,  a  palseographic  peculiarity  which  never  occurs  so 
early  as  the  Sixth  Dynasty.  The  sculpture  cannot  be  older  than 
the  Twelfth  Dynasty  (2000-1788  b.  c.)  The  other  relief  (PI.  II) 
shows  two  fragmentary  human  figures  wearing  Syrian  or  Semitic 
costumes,  supposed  by  Miiller  to  be  "Mesopotamians,"  and  dated 
by  him  ''before  2500  B.C.,"  perhaps  "Dynasty  5."  The 
relief  is  a  characteristic  Empire  work  not  older  than  the  sixteenth 
century  b.  c. 

Note  XII. — Recently  the  Nubian  expedition  of  Psamtik  II  has 
been  attributed  to  Psamtik  I,  and  the  famous  Greek  inscription 
left  by  mercenaries  at  Abu  Simbel  has  been  made  the  oldest  of 
Greek  inscriptions,  furnishing  a  "firm  basis"  for  "Greek  epi- 
graphies" (W.  Max  Miiller,  Publ.  No.  53,  Carnegie  Inst.,  Wash- 


NOTES  ON  RECENT  DISCOVERIES  443 


ington,  pp.  22-23,  PI.  12-13).  This  conclusion  of  Miiller  is 
based  upon  an  inscription  at  Kamak  stated  by  him  to  record  an 
expedition  of  Psamtik  I  against  Nubia.  In  this  inscription,  how- 
ever, as  published  by  Miiller  himself,  the  name  of  the  royal 
author  thereof  (occurring  twice)  is  Psamtik  II !  {Nfr-yh-R'^  and 
Mnh-yb).    No  expedition  of  Psamtik  I  against  Nubia  is  known. 

Note  XIII. — Readers  who  notice  the  discrepancy  between  the 
Babylonian  dates  given  above  in  the  Chronological  Summary  and 
those  heretofore  current,  should  note  that  recent  researches  have 
disclosed  the  fact  that  the  First  Dynasty  of  Babylon  was  im- 
mediately followed  by  the  Third,  the  Second  being  a  parallel 
dynasty  of  kings  ruling  at  the  mouth  of  the  Euphrates.  It  is  thus 
no  longer  possible  to  maintain  the  early  date  of  Sargon  I  and 
Naramsin,  a  fact  long  ago  accepted  by  Eduard  Meyer  and 
Lehmann-Haupt.  Even  so  ardent  an  advocate  of  extremely  early 
Babylonian  dates  as  Hilprecht,  has  relinquished  the  early  date  of 
Sargon  I  and  Naramsin.  Indeed,  as  Eduard  Meyer  recently  re- 
marked to  the  author,  it  is  highly  improbable  that  we  possess  a 
single  Babylonian  document  older  than  3000  B.  c.  A  highly 
organized,  centralized,  stable  and  enduring  state  in  Egypt  (the 
Old  Kingdom)  is  over  a  thousand  years  older  than  in  Babylonia 
(First  Dynasty),  for  the  consolidation  of  the  smaller  kingdoms 
into  one  nation,  under  the  first  of  successive  dynasties,  took  place 
twelve  to  thirteen  hundred  years  earlier  in  Egypt  than  in  Baby- 
lonia (See  Ranke.,  Univ.  of  Penn.  Publ.,  Series  A,  Vol.  I,  part  I, 
p.  8,  note  1,  and  for  the  final  results  on  the  parallel  character  of 
the  Second  Dynasty,  see  KSEH,  II). 


A  SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY 


I.   GENERAL  HISTORIES  OF  ANTIQUITY 

See  list  in  GHBA  (G.  S.  Goodspeed,  A  History  of  the  Baby- 
lonians and  Assyrians,  New  York,  1906,  second  edition).  It  may 
be  added  that  a  new  edition  of  Meyer's  Geschichte  des  Altertums 
is  in  preparation  and  the  first  volume  containing  the  early  Orient 
is  now  in  press.  A  new  edition  of  Maspero's  smaller  history  of 
antiquity  (Histoire  ancienne  des  Peuples  de  TOrient)  appeared 
in  1904. 

II.   EGYPTIAN  HISTORY 

Maspero's  three  volumes  already  cited  among  General  Histories 
of  Antiquity  (GHBA),  especially  full  on  Egypt  (SteindorfiF,  see 
p.  450). 

MG  Eduard  Meyer — Geschichte   des   Alten  Aegyptens. 

Beriin,  1887. 

Wiedemann — Aegyptische  Geschichte.  Gotha,  1884- 
1885. 

W.  M.  F.  Petrie— History  of  Egypt.  Vol.  I-III. 
London. 

Budge — History  of  Egypt.    Vol.  I-VIII.  London. 
Brugsch — A  History  of  Egypt  under  the  Pharaohs. 
London. 

Bissing — Geschichte  Aegyptens.    Berlin,  1904. 

BH  Breasted— A  History  of  Egypt.    New  York,  1905. 

NGH  . . .  Newberry  and  Garstang — A  Short  History  of  Ancient 
Egypt.    London,  1904. 

On  the  later  periods: 

Mahaffy — History   of   Egypt   under   the  Ptolemaic 

Dynasty.    London  1899. 
Milne — History  of  Egypt  under  Roman  Rule.  London, 

1898. 

Stanley  Lane-Poole — History  of  Egypt  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  London,  1901.  (These  three  forming  vol- 
umes IV- VI  in  Petrie's  series.) 

444 


A  SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY  445 


m.   TEXTS  AND  TRANSLATIONS 

A.  TEXTS 

It  would  be  impossible  in  the  limits  here  imposed  to  give  even 
a  selected  list  of  the  great  number  of  Egyptian  texts  already  pub- 
lished. The  science  is  now  engaged  upon  the  great  task  of 
replacing  the  old  and  inaccurate,  but  once  standard,  editions  of 
the  Egyptian  monuments,  by  new  and  final  standard  publications, 
meeting  all  the  modern  requirements  of  accuracy  and  detail. 
The  largest  of  the  old  publications  still  in  use  are  the  following 
three  large  folios  of  plates: 

LD  Lepsius — Denkmaeler  aus  Aegypten  und  Aethiopien. 

Abth.,  I-XIL    Berlin,  1849-1858. 
CM  ChampoUion — Monuments  de  I'Egypte  et  de  la  Nubie. 

Vol.  I-IV.    Paris,  1835-1845. 
RM  Rosellini — Monumenti  dell'  Egitto  e  della  Nubia.  VoL 

I-IIL    Pisa,  1834. 
The  most  important  monuments  are  now  being  placed  at  the 
disposal  of  students  in  a  convenient  and  handy  form  combining 
accuracy,  perspicuity  and  cheapness  in  Urkunden  des  aegypti- 
schen  AJtertums,  ed.  Steindorff.    Leipzig,  1903  fj. 

B.  TRANSLATIONS 

Many  monuments  have  been  translated  in  special  publications 
or  in  the  current  journals  of  the  science.  The  translations  of 
religious  texts  are  noted  below  (V.  Religion),  and  those  in  litera- 
ture (belles  lettres)  in  VI.  A  limited  selection  of  translated  texts 
will  be  found  in  Records  of  the  Past.  The  historical  documents 
in  English,  complete  from  the  earliest  times  to  the  Persian  con- 
quest, will  be  found  in: 

BAR ....  Breasted — Ancient  Records  of  Egypt.  Vol.  I-V. 
Chicago,  1906-1907. 
The  references  to  BAR  in  this  history  refer  to  the  paragraphs, 
not  to  the  pages.  Full  information  on  the  bibhography  of  each 
monument  will  be  found  therein,  so  that  further  references  herein 
can  be  dispensed  with. 

IV.   GEOGRAPHY,  TRAVEL,  EXPLORATION,  ETC. 

Contemporary  descriptions  of  ancient  Egypt  are  chiefly  Herodo- 
tus and  Strabo.    The  condition  of  the  monuments  in  the  Middle 


446  A  SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Ages  is  scaiitily  indicated  in  the  Arab  geographers  and  historians, 
particularly: 

Abd  el-La tif — Relation  de  I'Egypte  par  Abd  al-Latif 

.  .  .  traduit  .  .  .  par  Silvestre  de  Sacy.  Paris,  1810. 
El-Idrisi — Description  de  I'Afrique.  ed.    Dozy  et  De 

Goeje.    Leyden,  1866. 
— Geographic  d'Idrisi.    Traduite  .  .  .  par  P.  Amad^e 

Jaubert.    Paris,  1836-1840. 
Ibn  Dukmak — Description  of  Egypt  (in  Arabic)  Bulak 

Press,  A.  H.  1309. 
Makrizi — Description  Historique  et  Topographlque  de 

I'Egypte  traduit  par  P.  Casanova  (in  M^moires  .  .  . 

de   rinstitut  fran9ais  .  .  .  du   Caire.  III.  Cairo, 

1906). 

The  monuments  of  the  Nile  valley  were  first  disclosed  to  Europe 
in  published  form  in  the  great  "Description  de  I'Egypte,"  pub- 
lished by  the  members  of  Napoleon's  Egyptian  expedition  (Plates 
Vol.  I-XI;  Texte,  Vol.  I-XXVL  Paris,  1820-1830).  The 
gradual  exploration  of  the  country,  and  the  discoveries  among  the 
monuments  in  modem  times,  may  be  traced  in  the  following 
works: 

J.  Lobo — A  Short  Relation  of  the  River  Nile.  London, 
1669. 

Wansleben — The  Present  State  of  Egypt  or  a  New  Re- 
lation of  a  Late  Voyage  into  that  Kingdom,  per- 
formed in  the  years  1672  and  1673.    London,  1678. 

Leach — Travels  on  the  Nile.    London,  1742. 

Pococke — World  Displayed,  or  a  Curious  Collection  of 
Voyages  and  Travels.    Vol.  XII.    London,  1774. 

— Voyages  de  Richard  Pococke.  Vol.  I-VI.  Neuf- 
chatel,  1772. 

— A  Description  of  the  East.    London,  1743. 

Norden— Travels  in  Egypt  and  Nubia  (1737-1738), 
translated  and  enlarged  by  Dr.  Peter  Templeman. 
Vol.  I-II.    London,  1757. 

Bruce — Travels  to  Discover  the  Source  of  the  Nile  in  the 
Years  1768-1773.  Vol.  I-VII.  London  and  Edin- 
burgh, 1813. 

W.  G.  Browne — Travels  in  Africa,  Egypt  and  Syria, 

1792-1798.    London,  1806. 
Denon — Travels  in  Africa.    London,  1803, 
Legh — Narrative  of  a  Journey  in  Egypt  and  the  Country 

Beyond  the  Cataracts.    London,  1816. 
Burckhardt — Travels  in  Nubia.    London,  1819, 


A  SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY  447 


Belzoni — Narrative  of  Operations  and  Discoveries  .  .  . 

in  Egvpt  and  Nubia.    London,  1820. 
Cailliaud— Voyage  a  Meroe  .  .  .  1819-1822.  Paris, 

1826-1828. ' 

Drovetti — Voyage  a  I'Oasis  de  Dakel.    Paris,  1821. 
Waddington  and  Hanbury — Journal  of  a  Visit  to  Some 

Parts  of  Ethiopia.    London,  1822. 
Champollion — Lettre  a  M.  Dacier,  relative  a  I'alphabet 

des  hieroglyphes.    Paris,  1822.  (Contains  an  account 

of  the  decipherment  of  the  hieroglyphic  by  him.) 
Lettres  ^crites  d'Egypte  et  de  Nubie.    Paris,  1833. 
Notices  descriptives   (Text  of   Monuments  de 
V  Egypt).    Vol.  I-II.    Paris,  1844. 
Hartleben — Champollion,  sein  Leben  und  sein  Werk. 

Vol.  I-II.    Beriin,  1906. 
Prudhoe — Extracts  from  Private  Memoranda  kept  by 

Lord  Prudhoe  on  a  Journey  from  Cairo  to  Sennaar  in 

1829.    Journal  Royal  Geogr.  Soc,  V.,  1835. 
Wilkinson — Topography  of  Thebes  and  General  View 

of  Egypt.    London,  1835. 
Wilkinson — Modem  Egypt  and  Thebes.    Vol.  I-II. 

London,  1843. 
Hoskins — Travels  in  Ethiopia.    I/ondon,  1835. 
D'Athanasi — Researches  and  Discoveries  in  Upper 

Egypt.    London,  1836. 
Russegger — Reisen  in  Europa,  Asien  und  Afrika,  1835 

bis  1841.    Vol.  MIL    Stuttgart,  1841,  (Vol.  II  is  on 

the  Nile  valley). 
Ferlini — Cenno  sugli  Scavi  Operati  nella  Nubia  e 

Catalogo  degli  Oggetti  Ritrovati.    Bologna,  1837. 
F erlini — Relation  Historique  des  Fouilles  Op^re^s  dans 

la  Nubie.    Rome,  1838. 
Holrovd — Notes  on  a  Journey  to  Kordofan  in  183^ 

1837.    London,  1839. 
L'Hote— Lettres  dcrites  d'Egypte  en  1838-1839.  Paris, 

1840. 

Lepsius — Discoveries  in  Egypt,  Ethiopia  and  the 
Peninsula  of  Sinai  in  the  Years  1842-1845.  London, 
1852.    Second  ed.,  1853. 

Lepsius — Letters  from  Egypt,  Ethiopia  and  Sinai. 
Translated  by  J.  B.  Homer.  London,  1853. 
Text  (Vol.  I-VI),  accompanying  the  Denkmaeler 
aus  Aegypten  und  Nubien, 

Brugsch — Die  G^ographie  des  alten  Aegypten.  Leip- 
zig, 1857. 


A  SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Bnigsch — Reiseberichte  aus  Aegypten.  Leipzig,  1855. 
Brugsch — Reise  nach  der  grossen  Oase  el-Khargeh. 

Leipzig,  1878. 
Brugsch — Dictionnaire  g^ographique.    Leipzig,  1879. 
Mariette — Description  des  fouilles  ^x^cut^es  en  Egvpte, 

en  Nubie,  et  au  Soudan,  1850-1854.    Paris,  186^- 

1867. 

Speke — Journal  of  the  Discovery  of  the  Source  of  the 

Nile.    London  and  Edinburgh,  1864. 

With  this  compare  the  discovery  of  higher  sources 
behind  the  equatorial  lakes  by 
Baumann — Durch  Massailand  zur  Nilquelle,  1891- 

1893.    Berlin,  1894. 
Baker,  Sir  S. — Albert  N'vanza  and  the  Great  Basin  of 

the  Nile.    Vol.  I-II.    London,  1866,  1872. 
Baker,  Sir  S. — The  Nile  Tributaries  of  Abysinia. 

London,  1867. 
Dillmann — Ueber   die   Anfaenge   des  Axumitischen 

Reichs.    Berlin,  1879. 
Duemichen — Geographical    Introduction    in  Meyer, 

Geschichte  des  Alten  Aegyptens.    Berlin,  1887. 
Ebers — Egypt,   Descriptive,   Historical,  Picturesque. 

London,  1881. 
Hilmy,  Prince  Ibrahim — Bibliography  of  Egypt  and  the 

Soudan.    Vol.  I-II.    London,  1886. 
Brown,  Maj.  R.  H. — The  Fayum  and  Lake  Moeris. 

London,  1892. 
Steindorff — Durch  die  Libysche  Wueste  zur  Amonsoase. 

Leipzig,  1904. 
Gleichen — The   Anglo-Egyptian   Sudan.    Vol.  I-II. 

London, 1905. 
Borchardt — Nilhoehe  und  Nilstandsmarken.  Abhand- 

lungen  der  Kgl.  Preuss.    Akad.,  1905. 
Lyons — The  Physiography  of  the  River  Nile  and  its 

Basin.    London,  1906. 
Petrie — Ten  Years  Digging  in  Egypt.    London,  1893. 
Petrie — Methods  and  Aims  in  Archaeology.  London, 

1901. 

Budge — The  Egyptian  Sudan,  Vol.  I-II.  London, 
1907.  Egypt  Exploration  Fund — Memoirs,  28  vols. 
— Archaeological  Survey,  16  vols. — Graeco-Roman 
Branch,  8  vols. — Special  Publications,  5  vols.  N.  B. 
A  survey  of  all  discoveries  in  Egypt  each  year,  be- 
ginning 1892,  is  furnished  by  the  Annual  Arch 
seological  Reports,  edited  by  F.  LI.  Griffith. 


A  SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY  449 


See  also  the  series  of  volumes  by 
Petrie,  and  his  Egyptian  Research  Account;  also  those 
of  the 

Deutsche  Orientgesellschaft,  and  those  of 

Reisner — University  of  California  Expedition,  now  about 
to  appear;  and 

Breasted — The  Temples  of  Lower  Nubia.  Chicago, 
1906.    University    of    Chicago  Expedition. 

The  Monuments  of  Upper  Nubia  and  the  Sudan.  Chi- 
cago, 1908.    University  of  Chicago  Expedition. 

M^moires  publics  par  les  Membres  de  la  Mission 
arch^ologique  fran9aise  au  Caire.  From  1881  on. 
Continued  as  M^moires  publics  pas  les  Membres  de 
ITnstitut  Fran9ais  d'Arch^ologie  orientale  du  Caire. 
Cairo. 

A  visit  to  all  the  chief  monuments  of  Egypt  with  maps, 
plans  of  all  great  temples,  and  one  hundred  stereo- 
graphic  views  accompanied  by  popular  explanations 
and  discussions: 

Breasted — Egypt  Through  the  Stereoscope.  A  Journey 
Through  the  Land  of  the  Pharaohs.  New  York,  1905. 

V.  RELIGION 
The  principal  texts  are: 

Maspero — Les  Inscriptions  des  Pyramides  de  Saqqarah. 
Paris,  1894  (Reprint  from  Recueil  de  Travaux.  Vols. 
III-V,  VII-XII,  XIV. 

Naville — Das  aegyptische  Totenbuch  der  18-20  Dy- 
nastic.   Berlin,  1886. 

Budge— The  Book  of  the  Dead.  Vol.  I-III.  London, 
1898. 

Budge — The  Hieratic  Papyrus  of  Nesiamsu.  West- 
minster, 1891. 

Lepsius — iElteste  Texte  des  Totenbuches.  Berlin. 
1867. 

Lepsius — Das  Totenbuch  der  Aegypter  nach  dem 
hieroglyphischen  Papyrus  in  Turin  .  .  .  Leipzig, 
1842. 

Lefebure — Hypog^es  royaux  (M^m.  de  la  Mission 

arch^olog.  fran9aise,  II-III,  1-2). 
Schack — Das  Zweiwegebuch. 

von  Bergmann — Das  Buch  vom  Durchwandeln  der 

Ewigkeit.    Vienna,  1877. 
J^quier — Livre  de  ce  qu'il  y  a  dans  I'Hadfes.  Paris, 

1894. 


A  SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY 


There  are  many  more  mortuary  and  magical  texts  not 

included  above. 
The  treatises  are: 

Erman — A  Handbook  of  Egyptian  Religion.  Trans- 
lated by  A.  S.  Griffith.    London,  1907. 

Steindorff — The  Religion  of  the  Ancient  Egyptians. 
New  York  and  London,  1905. 

Wiedemann — Die  Religion  der  alten  Aegypter.  Muen- 
ster,  1890  (also  to  be  had  in  English). 

Maspero — Etudes  de  Mythologie  et  d'Arch^ologie 
^gyptiennes.    Vol.  I-III.    Paris,  1893-98. 

Lange — Contribution  on  Egyptian  religion  in  Saussaye's 
Lehrbuch  der  Religionsgeschichte. 

Budge — Gods  of  the  Egyptians.  Vol.  I-II.  London, 
1902. 

The  chief  translations  are: 

Maspero — Translation  of  the  Pyramid  Texts  in  above 

edition  of  same. 
Renouf — Book  of  the  Dead  in  Life  Work  of  the  Late 

Sir  Peter  Le  Page  Renouf,  Vol.  IV.    Paris,  1907. 

Conclusion  by  Naville. 
Budge— The  Book  of  the  Dead.    Vol.  I-III.  London, 

1898. 

:.   MANNERS  AND  CUSTOMS;  ART  AND 
LITERATURE 

Erman — Life  in  Ancient  Egypt.  Translated  by  H.  M. 
Tirard.    London,  1895. 

Wilkinson — Manners  and  Customs  of  the  Ancient 
Egyptians.  Vol.  I-III.  London,  1885.  Now  out 
of  date,  but  an  invaluable  treasury  of  materials. 

Steindorff — Die  Bluetezeit  des  Pharaonenreichs.  Biele- 
feld, 1900. 

Perrot  &  Chipiez — History  of  Ancient  Art.    I.  Egypt. 

Maspero — Egyptian  Archaeology. 

Spiegelberg — Geschichte    der    Aegyptischen  Kunst. 

Leipzig,  1903. 
Borchardt — Die  Aegyptische  Pflanzensaule.  Berlin, 

1897. 

von  Bissing — Denkmaeler  aegyptischer  Sculptur.  Miin- 

chen,  1905-1907  (not  yet  complete). 
Erman — General  Sketch  of  Egyptian  literature  proper. 

ELAE.    Chapter  XV. 
Griffith — Best  series  of  translations  in  English  in 


A  SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY 


451 


Library  of  the  World's  Best  Literature,  edited  by  C. 
D.  Warner. 

Maspero — Les  Contes  populaires  de  L'Egypte  ancienne, 

3rd  ed.    Paris,  1905. 
Petrie — Egyptian  Tales.    London.    (After  Griffith  and 

Maspero.) 

Erman  &  Krebs — Aus  den  Papyrus  der  Koniglichen 
Museen.    Berlin,  1899. 

Miiller — Die  Liebespoesie  der  alten  Aegvpter.  Leip- 
zig, 1899. 

Demotic  tales: 

Griffith — Stories  of  the  High  Priests  of  Memphis.  Lon- 
don, 1900. 
Krall— in  KFB  and  WZKM,  XVII. 

VQ.    EGYPTL^X  MONXMEXTS  AXD  THE  BIBLE 

Eduard  Meyer — Der  Moses-Sage  und   die  Leviten. 

Sitzungsber.    Berlin.  Akad.,  1905,  640. 
Eduard  Meyer — Die  Israeliten  und  Ihre  X'achbar- 

staemme. 

Steindorff — In  Recent  Research  in  Bible  Lands,  ed. 
Hilprecht.    Philadelphia,  1906. 

Griffith — In  Authority  and  Archa?ology,  ed.  Hogarth. 
Xew  York,  1899. 

Miiller — Asien  und  Europa  nach  altaegyptischen  Denk- 
maelern.    Leipzig,  1893. 

Spiegelberg — Aegyptische  Randglossen  zum  Alten 
Testament.    Strassburg,  1904. 

Spiegelberg — Aufenhalt  Israels  in  Aegvpten.  Strass- 
burg, 1904. 

VIIL   COLLECTIOXS  OF  ESSAYS,  SERIES, 
JOURXALS,  ETC. 

Zeitschrift  fiir  Aegyptische  Sprache  und  Altertums- 

kunde,  ed.  by  Erman  &  Steindorff.  Leipzig. 
Untersuchungen  zur  Geschichte  und  Altertumskunde 

Aegyptens,  ed.  by  Sethe.  Leipzig. 
Recueil  de  Travaux  relatifs  a  la  Philologie  et  a  I'Ar- 

cheologie  egvptiennes  et  assvriennes,  ed.  ^Maspero. 

Paris.    Vol.  'l,  1870;  Vols.  II      1880  fj. 
Revue  egyptologique,  ed.  by  Revillout.    Paris,  1880  ff. 
Sphinx,  ed.  Ernst  Andersson,  Upsala  (formerly  K. 

Piehl).    From  1897  on. 


452 


A  SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Melanges    d'archeologie    egyptienne    et  assyriemiCo 

Paris,  1872-1878. 
Melaages  egyptologiques,   ed.   Chabas.  Chalon-sur- 

Saone,  1862-1873. 
L'Egyptologie,  ed.  Chabas.    Paris,  187&-1878. 
Bulletin  de  I'institut  fran9ais  d'archeologie  orientale  au 

Caire. 

Annales  du  Service  des  Antiquit^s  de  I'Egypte.  Cairo, 
1900  fj. 

Bibliotheque  egyptologique,  ed.  Maspero.    Vol.  I-XII. 

Paris,  1893  ^. 
Maspero — Etudes  egyptiennes.    Paris,  1886  jj. 
Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaeology, 

London.    From  1879  on. 
Transactions  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archseology. 

Ten  vols.  only.    1872  on. 
American  Journal  of  Semitic  Languages,  ed.  Harper. 

Chicago.    (Continuing  Hebraica.) 

IX.  CHRONOLOGY 

Eduard  ]\Iever — Aegyptische  Chronologie.  Abhandl. 
der  Berl.  Akad.,  1904. 

Ginzel — Handbuch  der  Mathematischen  und  Techni- 
schen  Chronologie.  Vol.  I.  Zeitrechnung  der  Baby- 
lonier,  Aegypter,  Mohammedaner,  Perser,  etc.  Leip- 
zig, 1906. 

Lehmann — Zwei  Hauptprobleme  der  altorientalischen 
Chronologie.    Berlin,  1898. 

King — Studies  in  Eastern  History:  Chronicles  Concern- 
ing earlv  Babylonian  Kings.  Vol.  I-II.  London, 
1907. 

Niebuhr — Die  Chronologie  der  Geschichte  Israels, 
Aegvptens,  Babvloniens  und  Assyriens.  Leipzig, 
1896. 

Breasted— BAR,  I,  38-75. 

X.  ABBREVIATIONS 

AS  Annales  du  Service. 

AJSL  American  Journal  of  Semitic  Languages. 

AL  Winckler,  Amarna  Letters. 

BAR.  .  .  .Breasted,  Ancient  Records  of  Egypt. 
BFLM.  -Bro^s-n,  Fayum  and  Lake  Moeris. 
BH  Breasted,  A  History  of  Egypt. 


A  SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY  453 


BIHC . .  .  Birch,  Inscriptions  in  the  Hieratic  Character. 

BI  Bulletin  de  I'lnstitut. 

BK  Breasted,  Battle  of  Kadesh. 

BT  Brugsch,  Thesaurus. 

BTLN . .  Breasted,  Temples  of  Lower  Nubia. 

CC  Catalogue  of  Cairo  Museum. 

DG  Duemichen,  Grabpalast. 

EA  Erman,  Aegypten  u.  aeg}^pt.  Leben. 

EG   "       Gespraich  eines  Lebensmiiden, 

ELAE. . .     "       Life  in  Ancient  Egypt. 

EHEL.  .     "       Handbook  of  Egyptian  Religion. 

FE  Festschrift  fUr  Ebers. 

GHBA.  .Goodspeed,  History  of  the  Babylonians  and  Assyrians. 

GIM. . .  .Gardiner,  Inscription  of  Mes  (SU,  IV). 

G JL  ....  Gautier- Jequier,  Fouilles  de  Licht. 

GKP. .  .  .Griffith,  Kahun  Papyri. 

GLWBL      "      Library  of  World's  Best  Literature. 

GMBK.  .Garstang,  Mahasna  and  Bet  Khallaf. 

GTD. ...       "       Tombs  of  the  Third  Dynasty. 

KFB  Krall,  Festgaben  fiir  Budinger,  Innsbruck,  1898. 

KSEH...King,  Studies  in  Eastern  History-,  I-II. 
KSGW.  .  Berichte  der  Phil. -hist.  Classe  der  Konigl.  Sachs.  Gesell. 
der  Wissenschaften  zu  Leipzig. 

LD  Lepsius,  Denkmaeler  aus  Aeg^'pten  und  Aethiopien. 

MA  Mariette,  Adydos. 

MAAG .  .  Meyer,  Das  erste  Auf treten  der  Arier  in  der  Gesch, 
Sitzungsber.  der  Berl.  Akad.,  1908  (9.  Jan.). 

MC  Meyer,  Aegyptische  Chronologic. 

MCd'AB  Mariette,  Cat.  gen.  d'Abydos. 

MCM. .  .de  Morgan,  Catalogue  des  Monuments. 

MCP. . .  .Maspero,  Contes  populaires. 

MD  de  Morgan,  Fouilles  a  Dahchour. 

MDOG.  .Mitteilungen  der  Deutschen  Orientgesellschaft. 

MG  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  alten  Aegyptens. 

ML  Miiller,  Liebespoesie. 

MM  Mariette,  Les  ]Mastabas. 

MMD...      "       Monuments  diverse. 
MMR.  .  .Maspero,  Momies  royales. 

MNC  . . .  Mever,  Nachtrag  zur  aeg,  chron.  Abh.  der  Berl.  Akad. 
1*908. 

MSPER.Mitth.  aus  d.  Samml.  d.  Pap.  Erzherzog  Rainer. 

NA  Naville,  Ahnas  el-Medineh. 

NGH  . .  .  Newberry-Garstang,  History  of  Egypt. 

OLZ ....  Orientalistische  Literaturzeitung. 

PA  Papyrus  Anastasi  (Brit.  Mus.  Select  Papyri). 


454  A  SELECTED  BIBLIOURAFHY 


PB  Papyrus  de  Boulaq. 

PCH. . .  .Perrot-Chipiez,  History  of  Art. 
PEFQS.. Palestine  Expl.  Fund,  Quart.  Statement. 

PG  Petrie,  Pyramids  and  Temples  of  Gizeh. 

PHE ....     "    History  of  Egypt. 

PI   Illahun. 

PKGH. .      «    Kahun,  Gurob  &  Hawara. 

PKM  . .  .Erman-Krebs,  Papyrus  des  Konigl.  Museimis. 

PP  Papyrus  Prisse. 

PPS  Petrie,  Cat.  of  Egyptian  Antiquities  found  in  the 

Peninsula  of  Sinai. 

PS  Petrie,  Season  in  Egypt. 

PSall.  .  .  .Papyrus  Sallier. 
PScar. .  .Petrie,  Scarabs. 

PSBA . .  .  Proceedings  of  the  Soc.  of  Bib.  Arch. 

PT  Petrie,  Tanis. 

PET....    "      Egyptian  Tales. 

PW  Papyrus  Westcar,  ed.  Erman. 

QH  Quibell,  Hieraconpolis. 

RIH. . . .  de  Rouge,  Inscr.  hierogl. 

Rec  Recueil  de  Travaux,  ed.  Maspero. 

SBA  Sitzungsberichte  d.  Berlin.  Akad. 

SEI  Sharpe,  Egyptian  Inscriptions. 

SS  Spiegelberg,  Studien  und  Materialien. 

TP  Turin  Papyrus  of  Kings. 

WAL  Winckler,  Amarna  Letters. 

WRS. . ,  .Weill,  Recueil  des  Inscr.  Egypt,  du  Sinai. 
WU AG.  .Winckler,  Untersuchungen  zur  altorientalischen  Ge- 
schichte. 

WZKM.. Wiener  Zeitschr.  f.  d.  Kunde  d.  MorgenL 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS 


Note.  For  a  full  statement  of  the  system  of  transliteration 
adopted,  the  reader  is  referred  to  the  preface  of  BAR,  I.,  pp. 
xiv.  ff.  Hieroglyphic  writing  does  not  indicate  vowels.  They 
must  be  supplied  by  the  modern  scholar  more  or  less  arbitrarily 
in  most  cases,  even  the  place  of  the  vowel  among  the  consonants 
being  often  uncertain.  The  vowels  thus  supplied  are  commonly 
given  the  continental  or  Italian  sounds  and  no  vowels  are  silent. 
"Kh"  indicates  a  single  sound,  a  deep  guttural  ch  as  in  the 
Scotch  loch  or  German  nach.  W  and  Y  are  always  consonantal, 
and  are  pronounced  as  in  English.  The  latter  statement  is  for 
practical  purposes  also  true  of  all  the  remaining  consonants. 
The  primary  accent  is  indicated  by  the  secondary,  if  any,  by 
The  letter  after  a  name  indicates  its  character:  e.g.,  c  =  city; 
d,  district;  g,  god  or  goddess;  k,  king;  n,  noble;  o,  officer;  p, 
people;  q,  queen;  r,  river;  t,  town.  M.  K.  =  Middle  Kingdom; 
O.  K.  =  Old  Kingdom;  Emp.  =  Empire;  Rest.  =  Restoration. 


A'-BA,  392 
A-bab'-deh,  p,  7 
Ab-sha',  158 

Abd-a-shir'-ta,  n,  282,  298 
Abd-khi'-ba,  n,  285,  297 
Abram,  363 
Abu  Sim'-bel,   312,  319,  407; 

Greek  inscription  at,  407 
A-bu-sir',  115 

Abydos,  43,  46,  50,  148,  300, 

301,  302 
Abyssinia,  4,  8,  383 
Achae'ans,  329 

Aegean,  earliest  commerce  with, 
50;  in  M.  K.,  159;  in  Emp., 
211,  234,  235,  253,  325 

Ae-gi'-na,  413 

Aeolians,  413 

Africa,  3,  4,  7,  29;  earliest  ex- 
ploration of,  124  ff.;  circum- 
navigation of,  407 


Agriculture,  9-10,  88;  earliest, 
32 

Ah-mo'-se  I.,  k,  186-193,  205  f. 
Ahmose  II.  =  A-ma'-sis,  q.  v. 
Ahmose,  q,  208,  214 
Ahmose  (son  of  Ebana),  n,  187, 
188 

A-khet-a'-ton,  c  (see  also  Am- 
arna),  270-272,  285,  286, 
287,  288 

Akh-tho'-es,  k,  134 

Alabastron'polis,  c,  293 

A'-la-sa,  or  Alasia,  see  Cyprus. 

A-lep'-po,  232,  239,  303,  305 

Al-ta'-qu,  c,  375 

A'-ma-da,  247 

A-mar'-na,  t  (see  also  Akheta- 

ton),  270 
Amarna  Letters,  250.  288 
A-ma'-sis,  k,  411-18 
I  A-men-ar'-dis,  q,  371,  377,  381 


456 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS 


A'-men-em-hab',  n,  233,  237 
A'-men-em-het'  I.,  k,  137  f., 

139  f.,  152  f.,  164,  167 
Amenemhet  II.,  k,  154,  155 
Amenemhet  III.,  k,  160-163, 

169,  170 
Amenemhet  IV.,  k,  170 
A-men-ho'-tep  I.,  k,  205,  207  f., 

258,  359 
Amenhotep  II.,  k,  241,  245-7, 

253 

Amenhotep  III.,  248-263,  280, 
331 

Amenhotep    IV.,    see  Ikhna- 
ton. 

Amenhotep,  son  of  Ha'pu,  255 
Amenhotep    (High   Priest  of 

Amon),  349 
A-me-ni',  n,  154 
A-men-me-ses',  k,  332 
Ammon,  375,  408 
Amon  and  Amon-Re,  g,  203, 

228,  267,  268  f.,  286  f.,  288, 

304,  322  f.,  337,  341-3,  352  f.; 

in  Syria,  230,  337,  352  f.;  in 

Nubia,  367  ff. 
Amon,  High  Priest  of,  202  f., 

268,  322  f.,  342,  348  ff.,  352, 

362,  364,  377,  388;  as  King, 

350  ff.,  355  f.,  357-361 
Amor  and  Amorites,  282,  298, 

317,  327,  335,  337,  351 
A'-nath,  g,  318,  324 
Animal  worship,  61  f.,  324,  397 
Annals     (see     also  Palermo 

Stone),  47,  238 
An'-shan,  416 
A-nu'-bis,  g,  48 
A'-pis,  g,  48,  397 
A-po'phis,  k,  176,  179, 183,  184, 

185 

Ap'-ri-es,  k,  408-412 
Arabia,  29,  210,  387 
Arabian  Desert,  7 
A^rai'-na,  c,  239 


Aramaeans,  210,  284;  in  Egypt, 

398 
Arch,  94 

Architecture,  earliest,  44-45; 
in  O.  K.,  99-100;  in  M.  K, 
165;  in  Emp.,  218  f.,  255-9, 
339;  in  Rest.  394 

Armenians,  281 

Army,  82,  144  f.,  193-5,  200, 
202,  224,  252,  318  f.,  389  f., 
410  f.,  414 

Ar'-ra-pa-khi'-tis,  c,  239 

Ar-si'noe,  160,  162 

Art,  earliest,  30-32;  proto-dy- 
nastic,  42-43;  in  O.  K.,  88- 
100;  in  M.  K.,  165  f.;  in 
hither  Asia,  211  f.;  in  Emp., 
255-261,  278  f.,  300,  301, 
319  f.,  338;  in  Rest.,  393  f. 

Ar-ta'-ta-ma,  k,  247,  251 

Ar'-vad,  c,  211,  230,  231,  303, 
310,  335,  409 

Aryans,  in  Mitanni,  212. 

Ash'-dod,  402 

A-shur-ban'-i-pal,  k,  380-382, 
387  f. 

Asia,  3,  29 

Asia  Minor,  4,  89,  159,  211,  212, 
280  f.,  233,  235,  304,  334,  343, 
388 

As'-ka-lon,  c,  285,  328,  331,  375, 
404 

Asklep'ias,  105 

Assuan",  c,  7,  125 

Assyria  and  Assyrians,  177, 
229,  249,  250,  251,  368  f., 
402  f.;  Western  empire  of, 
373  ff.,  375-388,  402;  faU  of, 
404,  406 

As-tar'-te,  g,  318,  324 

Astronomy,  93 

As-ty'-a-ges,  416 

At-ba'-ra,  r,  4 

Athens,  414 

A-thrib'-is,  c,  380,  396 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS  457 


Atlantic,  3 

A'-ton,  g,  267  ff.,  299;  cities  of, 

269  f. 
A-tum',  58,  59 

Ava'ris,  c,  176,  177,  178,  179, 

180,  185,  186,  187 
A'-yan,  d,  88 

A-zi'-ru,  282,  283,  284,  298 

Baal,  g,  210;   in  Egypt,  318, 

324 
Baal,  k,  379 

Babylonia,  Old,  33,  46,  149, 
159,  212,  229,  248,  249,  250, 
262,  280,  281,  317,  375,  376, 
387,  398,  404;  gifts  from,  233 

Babylonia,  New,  404,  406-416 

Ba'-hr  Yu'-suf,  r,  5,  6 

Bast,  g,  60 

Beduin,  50,  121,  159,  182,  213, 
283,  284,  297,  316,  337,  375 

Be'-ga,  p,  29 

Bek,  o,  270,  278 

Bek-et-a'-ton,  270 

Ben-A'nath,  318 

Ben-'O'zen,  n,  318 

Berber,  329 

Berut',  c,  284,  303 

Beth-She'an,  c,  351 

Bet  KhaUaf,  d,  105 

Bi-khu'-ru,  n,  283 

Bint-A'nath,  318 

Blemra'-yes,  p,  383 

Blue  Nile,  4,  8,  9 

Boats,  see  ships 

Boc'-cho-ris,  k,  371  f.,  374 

Bo-ghaz-KoM,  t,  281 

Book  of  the  Dead,  150,  203  f., 
391 

Brick,  89-90;  earliest,  31 
Bronze,  394 

Bu-bastMs,  c,  60,  110,  165,  177, 
184,  363,  364;  kings  at,  360- 
366,  370 

Bur-ra-bur'-yash,  k,  280 


Bu-sirMs,  61 
Bu'-to,  g,  36,  41 
Buto,  c,  34,  36,  46,  396 
Bu-yu-wa'-wa,  360 
Byblos,  c,  158,  211,  245,  263, 
282,  283  f.,  351,  352 

Ca-la-syr'-i-es,  390 
Calendar,  15,  25,  35-36,  46 
Cam-by'-ses,  247,  383,  418 
Canaanites,  210,  331,  362 
Canal,  5,  9,  11;   through  first 

cataract,   122,   155  f.,  209; 

from  Nile  to  Red  Sea,  159, 

218,  407 
Cappado'cia,  159 
Car'-che-mish,  c,  232,  303,  335; 

battle  of,  406 
Carians,  388,  389,  399 
Carmel,  m,  224 
Cataract,  4-5,  8-9,  122 
Cedar,  90,  247,  338,  352 
Chariot,  195 
Chi'-os,  413 
Chronology,  24-26,  46 
Cilicia,  89,  304 
Cim-mer'-i-ans,  p,  387,  388 
City-state,  33,  210 
Cla-zo-me'-nae,  413 
aimate,  8,  10-11 
Cni'-dus,  413 
Cnos'-sos,  179,  253 
Column  &  Colonnade,  99-100, 

257,  394 
Commerce  and  Trade,  91-92; 

earliest,  33;  in  O.  K.,  83,  106, 

114,  122,  127;  in  M.  K.,  159; 

in  Emp.,  210  f.,  253  f.;  in 

Rest.,  398  f .,  407 
Copper,  31,  32,   42,    89,  92, 

106,  246,  251,  338;  as  money, 

163 

Cop'-to8,  31,  127,  154  f.,  237 

Court,  royal,  74  f . 

Costume,  86-87;  earliestj  30  f. 


458 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS 


Courts  of  justice,  79  f.,  143, 

195,  198  f.,  344 
Crete,  179,  235,  253,  254,  333 
Crocodilo'polis,  c,  162 
Croesus,  k,  416 
Crown,  34,  36,  41 
Cy-ax'-a-res,  k,  404,  406 
Cyprus,  211,  234,  235,  239,  250, 

251,  253,  298,  317,  335,  354, 

409,  415 
Cy-re'-ne,  c,  411,  413 
Cyrus,  416  f. 

Dah-shur',  t,  106,  107 
Damascus,  227,  263 
Da-mi-ette',  c,  6 
Dan-a'-oi,  p,  334 
Daph'-nae,  c,  389,  414 
Darda'nians,  304 
David,  360 

Dead,  beliefs  regarding,  36,  65- 

73,  149-51,  203  f. 
Decadence,    347-388;  sketch 

of,  21-22;  sources,  27-28 
De'du,  c,  61 
Delphians,  413 

Delta,  5-6,  7,  8,  11,  12,  15,  33, 
34,  35,  38,  121,  236,  237, 
311,  314,  329  f.,  333,  336, 
350,  360  ff.,  365,  379  ff.,  394, 
398,  407 

De-mot'-ic,  395 

Den'-de-reh,  c,  37,  60,  110 

Den'-yen,  p,  334 

Der  el-Bah'ri,  d,  216,  217 

Desert,  3,  4,  6-7,  11-12 

De-suk',  t,  110 

Dog  River,  303,  379 

Don'-go-la  Province,  208  f . 

Dor,  c,  351,  352 

Dorians,  413 

Drama,  earliest,  148,  169 
Drawing,  97-98,  261 
Dush-rat'-ta,  k,  251,  280  f. 
Dynasties,  15 


Ed'-fu,  5,  40,  60,  152 

E'-dom,  374,  375 

Edomite,  316 

Education,  92-94,  395 

Egypt,  limits  of,  4-8,  11;  soil 

of,  5-6,  8-9;    shape  of,  8 

climate,  8;  wealth  of,  9-10; 

ruins    of,    12;  population, 

83 

Egypt,  Lower  (see  also  Delta), 
34,  35,  49,  379,  381 

Egypt,  Upper,  36-39,  41, 49,  78- 
79,  379,  380 

Egyptians,  race  of,  29  f . ;  earli- 
est, 29-34 

Egyptian  Language,  origin,  29 

Eighteenth  Dynasty,  186-9, 
205  f.,  207-289;  date  of,  24- 
25 

Eighth  Dynasty,  133-4 
E-ke'-reth,  c,  303 
Ek'-wesh,  p,  329 
EMam,  387 

E-le-phan-ti'-ne,  c,  5,  33,  92, 

121,  124,  125,  126,  197,  389 
Eleventh  Dynasty,  135-7;  date 

of,  25 
E-leu'-the-ros,  r,  231 
E-li'-a-kim,  k,  405 
El  Kab',  c,  36,  41,  46,  157, 186  f ., 

187,  189 
Empire,   186-344;    sketch  of, 

19-21,  24;  sources  for,  27 
E'-nekh-nes-Me-ri-re',  q,  125 
En-en'-khet,  n,  127 
En'-khu,  n,  182 
E'-reth,  c,  337 
E-sar-had'-don,  k,  378-380 
Es-dra-e'-lon,  d,  224,  225,  226, 

298,  351,  404 
Es'-neh,  189 
Ethiopia,  383,  390 
Ethiopian  period,   sketch  of, 

22,  24 
E-trus'-cans,  p,  329 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS 


45'J 


Euphrates,  r,  3,  208,  209,232, 
248;     northern   frontier  of 
Egypt,  213,  233,  234,  405  f. 
Europe,  4,  7 

European  civilization,  rise  of, 
3  f.,  7,  12,  13,  14,  50,  159, 
253,  329  f.,  337  f.,  339 

Eusebius,  15 

Extradition,  251 

E'-ye,  n,  and  k,  264,  289 

Ezekiel,  415 

Family,  83-84 
Fayum',  d,  6,  161  f.,  170 
Fifth  dynasty,  112-116,  117 
First    dynasty,    40-51,  300; 

length  and  date  of,  25 
Flax,  91 
FHnt,  32 

Fo-a-khir',  Wady,  89 
Fourth  dynasty,  107-112 
Fourteenth  dynasty,  182 
Furniture,  42-44,  85,  86,  259; 

earhest,  31 
Future  life,  36,  65-73,  149-51, 

203  f. 

Galilee,  283,  298,  363 
GalMa,  p,  29 
Ga'-za,  c,  404 
Ge-be-len',  182 
Gebel  Ze-ba'-ra,  300 
Gem-A'-ton,  268,  270,  288 
Ge'-zer,  t,  158,  285,  331,  362 
Gi-lu-khi'-pa,  q,  251 
Gi'zeh,  t,  108,  110,  111 
Glass,    90,    259;   earliest,  31, 
42 

God,  265  ff.;  local,  33 

Gold,  42,  89,  92,  122,  142,  154, 
155,  157,  197,  235,  245,  250, 
251,  254,  301,  340,  405 

Governor  of  the  South,  118-19, 
120,  121,  124,  142 

Greece,  211,  253 


Greeks,  399;  influence  of  Egypt 
on,  399-402;  in  Egypt,  389, 
398,  399,  400,  410  f.,  412- 
415 

Gy'-ges,  k,  388 

Hal-i-car-nas'-sus,  413 
Ha'-math,  c,  280 
Ham-ma-mat',  88,  136  f.,  142, 

153,   348,  377;  opening  of, 

115 

Har-khuf',  n,  124,  125,  126 
Harmhab',  k,  287,  289,  293-7 
Ha-ti'-ba,  q,  354 
Hat-sho',  c,  336 
Hattusir,  k,  311 
Hauran',  298 
Hathor,  g,  48,  60,  64 
Hatnub',  88,  110,  120 
Hat-shep'-sut,  q,  214  f.,  216- 
222 

Hatshepsut-Mer-et-re',  q,  241 
Hebrews  (see  also  Israel),  182, 

284,  351,  366 
Hebrew    language   in  Egypt, 

318 

Heliopolis,  46,  57,  59,  60,  64, 
110,  112,  196,  203,  267,  268, 
300 

Hel-le'-ni-um,  413 
He'-nu,  n,  136 

Heracleopolitans,  17,  23,  134- 

136;  duration  of,  25 
Heracleo'polis,    46,    360;  late 

principaHty  of,  360,  361,  364 
Herds,  88 
Her-mon'-this,  135 
Hermo'polis,  60,  368 
Her-mo-ty'-bi-es,  390 
Hezeki'ah,  375 

Hieracon'polis,  36,  43,  45,  46, 
48,  49 

Hierat'ic,  writing,  92-93,  395 
Hieroglyphic  (see  also  Writing), 
397 


460 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS 


Hittites,  in  M.  K.,  159;  in 
Emp.,  212,  233,  239,  240, 
262  f.,  280,  283,  298,  299, 
303-312,  317,  327  f.,  331, 
335,  337,  351 

Hoph-ra'',  k,  408 

Hor,  n,  389 

Horse,  184,  195,  229,  317 
Horus,  g,  36,  48,  49,  59,  60 
Horus  (title),  40-41,  112 
House,  85,  87;  earliest,  31 
Hri-hor',  k,  352,  355,  357 
Hunting,  earliest,  32,  42;  roy- 
al, 262 

Hyk'-sos,  18-19,  23,  175-188, 
240 

Ian'nas,  k,  183 

I-ka'-thi,  c,  246 

I'-kher-nof-ret,  n,  157 

Ikh-na'ton,  k,  250,  264-288, 
293;  meaning  of,  269 

Im-ho'tep,  n,  81,  100,  104,  396 

I-mou'-thes,  see  Imhotep. 

Indian  Ocean,  127 

Indo-Germanic  people  first  en- 
ter Asia  Minor,  28  p,  334 

Industries,  88-92,  166,  205; 
earliest,  30-33 

I-nen'-i,  n,  213 

In'tef  (nomarch),  135 

Intefs,  k,  136,  184 

Inundation,  8-10 

lonians,  388,  389 

Ipuwer',  168 

Iran,  212 

I'rem,  238 

Iron,  89,  122 

Irrigation,  8-9,  11,  49,  161  f. 

Ir'thet,  123,  126 

Isaiah,  372  f,  374,  376  f. 

I-se'-si,  k,  115 

Ish'-tar,  g,  263 

r-sis,  g,  58,  60 

Isis,  q,  214,  396 


Israel,  149,  181  f.,  328  f.,  33J 

351,  360,  365,  373 
I-ta'-ka-ma,  k,  282 
Ith-to'-we,  c,  139,  143 

Jacob-her  (or  Jacob-el),  181. 
183 

Je-ho'-a-haz,  k,  405 
Je-hoi'-a-chin,  k,  408 
Je-hoi'-a-kim,  k,  405 
Jeremi'ah,  406,  410,  415 
Jerobo'am,  362 

Jerusalem,  285,  363,  406,  407, 
408;  destruction  of,  410 

Jewelry,  42-43,  51,  89,  166, 
206;  earliest,  31 

Joppa,  c,  238 

Jordan,  298,  363 

Joseph,  189,  197,  200,  316,  321 

Josiah,  k,  405 

Judah,  362  f .,  374,  375  ff.,  404  f., 
406 

Judge,  79-80,  198 
Judgment,  hereafter,  67,  149  f. 
Julius  Africanus,  15 
Josephus,  15 

Ka,  65,  70 

Ka-by'-les,  p,  30 

Ka-dash-man-Bel',  k,  250 

Ka'-desh,  181  f.,  210,  223,  224, 
226,  227,  228,  229  f.,  231, 
239  f,  282,  299,  303,  304, 
337;  battle  of,  304  ff. 

Kadesh  (in  GaHlee),  c,  298 

Ka-ka'i,  k,  112 

Kaldeans,  415 

Kar'-nak,  229,  257  f.,  315,  319, 

339,  363 
Ka'-roy,  246 
Kassites,  212 
Keb,  g,  57 
Ke'desh,  g,  324 
Keft'-yew,  p,  211,  254 
Ke-gem'-ne,  n,  81,  100,  168 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS  461 


Ke-mo'-se,  k,  186 

Ke'-per,  k,  336 

Ket'-ne,  c,  212,  310 

Kez-we'-den,  304 

Kha-bi'-ri,  263,  284,  285 

Khartum',  4 

Khaf-re',  k,  110-11 

Kliamwe''-se,  325 

Kha-se'-khem,  k,  43,  49 

Kha'-se-khem-u'-i,  k,  45,  103 

Kha'-yu,  k,  38 

Khen'-zer,  k,  182,  183 

Khep'-ri,  g,  59 

Khe'-ta,  see  Hittites 

Khe-ta'-sar,  k,  311,  312 

Khi'-an,  k,  178,  179,  183 

Khnum-ho'-tep,  n,  138,  158 

Khon'-6U,  g,  312 

Khu'-fu,  k,  107-110 

King,  115,  117-119,  355  f.; 
earliest,  38  f.,  40-50;  as 
priest,  63-64;  as  mortuary 
benefactor,  71;  in  O.  K.,  74- 
78;  titles  of.  112-13;  in  M. 
K.,  139  ff.;  in  Emp.,  195  f., 
266  f.;  in  Rest.,  417 

Ko'-de,  303,  312 

Ko-ros'-ko,  t,  153 

Koser',  127 

Ku-mi'-di,  n,  283 

Kum'-meh,  t,  156,  247 

Kush,  123,  126,  154,  156,  341, 
355 

Labyrinth,  162  f. 

La'-chish,  c,  285 

Land,  ownership  of,  45-46,  141, 
188,  189,  196,  341,  395 

Law,  80,  143,  199  f.,  414 

Lebanon,  in  O.  K.,  106,  114, 
127;  in  Emp.,  209  f.,  223, 
224,  227,  231,  233,  238,  239, 
245,  298,  338;  in  Decadence, 
352;  in  Rest.,  409 

LiCUCOB  Limen',  127 


i  Libyans,  7,  29,  50;  in  Delta, 
34,  325,  327  ff.,  333  ff.,  336, 
360  ff.,  389;  Egj-ptian  affin- 
ity, 30;  in  M.  K.,  153;  in 
Emp.,  207  f.,  298,  318,  325, 
327  ff.,  336  f.,  343;  in  Egyp- 
tian army,  318,  360,  389, 
410  f.;  in  Decadence,  360- 
387;  in  Rest.,  389,  410  f. 

Libyan   period,  360-387; 
sketch  of,  21-22,  24 

Lin'-dos,  414 

Lisht,  t,  139 

Li-ta'-ny,  r,  299 

Literature,  in  O.  K.,  100  f.;  in 
M.  K.,  153,  159,  16fr-170;  in 
Emp.,  261,  320-322 

Lu'-li,  k,  375 

Lux'-or,  257,  315,  320 

Lycia,  254,  304,  325,  329 

Lydia,  388,  416 

Ma-gha'-ra,  Wady,  d,  50,  120 
Magic,  mortuary,  150,  203  f. 
Ma-ha-na'-im,  c,  363 
Mai,  n,  271 
Ma-ket-a'-ton,  287 
Manetho.  15.  26,  27,  321 
Mar'-duk-bal-id'-din,  k,  375 
Mare'a,  c,  389 
Mastaba,  69,  105,  107 
Mathematics,  93-94 
Maxyes  =  Meshwesh,  q.  v. 
Mazoi',  p,  123,  153 
Mechanics,  94 

Medes  and  Media,  404,  406, 
416-18 

Medicine,  94-95 

Medi'net-Ha'-bu,  338,  339 

Mediterranean,  3,  10,  12,  253, 
317,  338;  peoples  of  north- 
ern, 327  ff.,  329,  333  ff. 

Me-gid'-do,  c,  224,  225,  285; 
battle  of,  225  ff. 

Me'khu,  n,  126 


462 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS 


Memphis,  39-40,  46,  61,  64, 
103,  119,  199,  203,  265  f., 
268,  300,  314  f.,  317,  381, 
387,  391,  414;  captured  by 
Piankhi,  369;  captured  by 
Assyrians,  379 

Menat-Khu'-fu,  t,  108,  168 

Menes,  16;  date  of,  25;  reign 
of,  39-40 

Men-ku-re',  k.  Ill 

Ment-em-het',  n,  389,  395 

Men'-tu-ho'-teps,  k,  136  ff. 

Mentuho'tep,  n,  154 

Me'-ra-sar,  k,  299 

Me-rit-a'-ton,  q,  287 

Mer-ne-ptah',  k,  312,  316,  318, 
319,  327-332 

Mer-ne-re',  k,  121-125;  cam- 
paign in  Nubia,  124 

Merodach-bal'adan,  k,  375 

Me'-ro-e,  c,  383,  390,  408 

Mer-yey',  k,  329  f. 

Me-she'-sher,  k,  336 

Mesh'-wesh,  p,  329,  336,  360, 
361 

Me-ter-la,  k,  299,  303,  304,  306, 

306,  307-311 
Middle  Class,  83,  146, 194,  201  f. 
Middle  kingdom,  137  f.,  139- 

170;  sketch  of,  17-18,  23,  27 
Miebis',  k,  49,  50 
Mi-le'-tus,  413 
Min,  31,  48,  203 
Mis-phrag-mou'-tho-sis,  k,  181 
Mi-tan'-ni,  212,  223,  230,  231, 

232,  233,  245,  247,  248,  249, 

250,  251,  262,  280 
Mi-ty-le'-ne,  413 
Moab,  374,  375,  408 
Moeris,  lake,  162 
Money,  92,  161 
Monotheism,  147 
Monuments,  26-27 
Morality,  84  f. 
Muc-ri,  375 


Mummy  (see  Future  Life  and 
Tomb),  discovery  of  royal, 
359 

Mur'sili,  k,  see  Merasar 
Music  and  Song,  101,  321  f. 
Mut-em-u'-ya,  q,  248 
Mut-nof'-ret,  q,  214 
Muttallu,  see  Metella 
Mycenaeans,  159,  211  f.,  253, 

254 
Mysians,  304 

Na-bu-na'-'id,  k,  416 
Na-bu-pal-u'-cur,  k,  406 
Na-ha-rin',  213,  230,  231,  232, 

233,  234,  239,  240,  245,  246, 

263,  264,  303,  310,  317 
Nahum,  381  f.,  404 
Na'-pa-ta,  c,    208,    246,  319, 

368,  370,  381 
Narmer,  k,  49 
Naa'-te-sen,  k,  383 
Nau'cratis,  c,  412-413 
Navy  (see  Ships),  414,  415 
Ne'-bu-cha-drez'-zar,    k,  406, 

407,  408-^10,  415,  416 
Ne'-cho,  k,  404-407 
Ne'-cho,  n,  379,  380,  387 
Ne-fer-ho'-tep,  k,  173,  182 
Ne'-fer-khe-re',  k,  173 
Nef-ret-i'-ri,  q,  316 
Ne-ga'-deh,  c,  40 
Negroes,  7,  8,  157 
Ne'hi,  n,  241 
Neit,  33,  34,  48,  60,  64 
Ne'kheb  (see  also  El  Kab),  36 
Nekh'-bet,  g,  36,  41 
Ne'-khen,  c,  36,  45,  46,  80,  207 
Ne-ku-re',  n,  71 
Nemathap',  103 
Neph'-thys,  g,  58 
Ne'-su-be-neb'-ded,  k,  350,  3H 

358 

Neterimu',  k,  49 
Nib-a'-mon,  o,  230 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS 


463 


Nib'-hep-et-re',  k,  136,  218 
Nile,  4-5,  8-10,  57;  months  of, 
5-6 

Nile  Valley,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  11-12 
Nineteenth  dynasty,  293-333 
Nin'eveh  (see  also  Ajsyria),  c, 

263,  375 
Ninth  djTiasty,  134 
Ni-to'-cris,  q,  128 
Ni-to'-cris,  388 
Niy,  c,  233,  246,  282 
Nobles,  45-46,  83,  107,  117- 

118,  128,  135,  137  f.,  139- 

142,  188  f.,  196,  202 
Nof'-et-e'-t€,  q,  264 
Nomarch  (see  also  Noble),  139- 

146 

Nome,  earliest,  33;  in  O.  K., 
79, 81-82, 128;  inM.  K,  137f.; 
in  Emp.,  188  f. 

Nubia  and  Nubians,  in  army, 
82,  120  f.,  252,  304,  318;  in 
earliest  times,  40;  in  O.  K., 
104,  106,  120  f.,  121-127;  in 
M.  K.,  142,  152,  154,  155- 
157;  in  Emp.,  188,  207,  208  f., 
216,  232,  235  f.;  238,  241, 
246,  248,  249,  296,  301,  316, 
331;  in  Decadence,  351,  355, 
360,  363;  independent,  367- 
383,  407 

Nub'-khep-ru-re'-In'-tef,  k,  184 

Nu'-ges,  c,  303 

Nut,  g,  57,  60 

Oases,  6, 106,  234,  329,  410,  415 
Obelisk,  47,  220  f.,  234,  256, 
315;  in  New  York,  234;  in 
Constantinople,  234;  in  Lon- 
don, 234;  of  Thutmose  III., 
234,  248;  in  Rome,  234,  248, 
315;  in  London,  234;  in 
Paris,  315 
Official  Class,  115,  119  f.,  143, 
201  f. 


Okapi,  32 

Oke'anos,  57,  407 

Old  Kingdom,  74-129;  sketch 
of,  16-17,  23,  27;  length  and 
date  of,  25;  revived  in  Res- 
toration, 391  £f. 

On  (see  HeUopolis) 

Oreho'menos,  c,  253 

Oron'tea,  r,  209,  230,  231,  232, 
239,  240,  262  f.,  282,  298, 
299,  303,  304,  310,  327 

Oryx-nome,  154 

Osir'is,  g,  48,  49,  51,  57,  60,  61, 
67,  148-150,  286,  396 

O-sor'-kon  I.,  364 

Osorkon  III.,  365,  368,  370, 
371,  377 

O'-thu,  c,  298 

Paixting,  98,  165  f.,  261 

Palace,  earliest,  42;  in  O.  K., 
78;  in  Emp.,  259,  261 

Palermo  Stone,  25,  27,  47,  100 

Palestine,  121,  351;  in  M.  K., 
158  f.,  176;  under  Hykeos, 
179  f.,  181  f.;  in  Emp.,  209- 
212,  223-227,  228,  235,  239, 
244,  245,  250,  263,  283,  284  f ., 
297  f.,  299,  303-311,  316  ff., 
318  f.,  328-331,  337;  in  De- 
cadence, 354,  360,  361,  362  ff., 
373  f.,  375  S.,  378;  in  Rest., 
402  f.,  406  f.,  408-410,  415- 
Hebrews  entering,  284  f. 

Pap>Tus,  34,  91,  338 

Papyrus  Harris,  340,  347  f. 

Pay-no'-zem  I.,  k,  368 

Pay-o'-nekh,  358 

Pe,  c,  36,  45,  46 

Pe'-des,  304 

Pe-di-bast',  k,  365 

Pentaur',  320 

Pen-te-we'-re,  320 

Pe'-pi  I.,  k,  37,  119-121 

Pepi  XL,  k,  125-128 


464 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS 


Pe-pi-nakht',  n,  126,  127 
Perian'der,  k,  402 
Peri're,  330 
Per-Ramses,  c,  314 
Pe-sib'-khen-no'  I.,  k,  358  f. 
Pesibkhenno  II.,  359,  361 
Pe'-yes,  344 

Peles'et,  p  (see  also  Philistines), 

333,  351 
Persia,  416-418 
Pharaoh  (see  King) 
Pha-se'-lis,  413 

Philistines,  333,  351,  360,  374, 

375,  402,  404  f . 
Pho-cae'-a,  413 

Phoenicia  and  Phoenicians,  in 
O.  K.,  106,  114,  121;  in 
Emp.,  210-212,  230,  233, 
235,  237,  253,  282,  297  f., 
299,  334  ff.;  in  Egypt,  317; 
in  Decadence,  352,  375;  in 
Rest.,  398  f.,  404  f.,  408  f. 

Phrygians,  enter  Asia  Minor, 
281,  334 

Pi-an'-khi,  368-371 

Pir'u,  374 

Pithom,  c,  314,  316 

Poetry,  oldest,  101;  in  M.  K., 

168  f.;    in  Emp.,  273-277, 

312,  320,  321  f. 
Polycra'tes,  k,  413 
Population,  83 
Portraiture,  see  Sculpture 
Pottery,  42,  92,  earliest,  31 
Prammares'',  g,  170 
Predynastic    civilisation,  16, 

30-39 

Priest,  48,  63-65,  70-71,  72, 
148,  199,  202f.,265ff.,322ff., 
340-343,  355  f.,  357-361, 
367  ff.,  395,  396 

Prophecy,  353 

Psam'-tik  I.,  k.,  387,  398,  401, 

402-404 
Psamtik  II.,  407  f. 


Psamtik  III.,  418 

Ptah,  g,  48,  61,  265  f.,  304,  325, 

338,  397 
Ptah-ho'-tep,  n,  81,  100,  114; 

wisdom  of,  116,  168 
Punt,  30;   earliest  voyage  to, 

114;  in  O.  K.,  114,  115,  127; 

in  M.  K.,  137,  142,  155;  in 

Emp.,  218  f.,  234,  238,  296, 

338 

Pyramid,  72,  78,  106,  107,  391; 
the  great,  108-110;  of  Kha- 
fre,  110;  of  Menkure,  111;  of 
Gizeh,  108-111;  of  Shep- 
seskaf.  111;  of  Fifth  Dynasty, 
115;  of  Eleventh  Dynasty, 
137;  of  Twelfth  Dynasty, 
164  f.;  ofThirteenth,  173;  Sev- 
enteenth, 184;  last,  205,  219 

Pyramid  texts,  37,  68,  101, 
116,  391 

Qarqar,  c,  365 
Queen,  75,  76 

Raamses,  see  Ramses,  c 
Rain,  8,  10-11 
Ramesse'um,  319 
Ramessids,  324 
Ram'ses  I.,  297 

Ramses  II.,  164,  301  f .,  304-310, 

340 

Ramses  III.,  333-344,  347 
Ramses  IV.,  347-348 
Ramses  V.,  348 
Ramses  VI  to  VIII.,  348 
Ramses  IX,  348,  349  f.,  351 
Ramses  X  and  XI.,  350 
Ramses  XII.,  350,  352,  355  f. 
Ramses,  c,  314,  316 
Ramses-nakht,  349 
Raphia,  battle  of,  373 
Re,  58,  66,  110,  112,  147  f., 

203,  267  ff.,  304,  338,  342; 

temples  of,  113 


INDEX  OF  NAAIES  AND  SUBJECTS  465 


Rehobo'am,  362 

Red  House,  35 

Red  Sea,  3,  7,  90,  114,  115,  124, 
127,  137,  142,  218  f.,  338; 
canal  from  Nile  to,  159,  407 

Religion,  30,  47;  earliest,  37; 
in  O.  K.,  55-73,  111-113;  in 
M.K.,  147-151;  inEmp.,265- 
288,  322-324,  340-343;  in 
Rest.,  391  f.,  396  f.;  in  Eu- 
rope, 402 

Re'shep,  g,  324 

Residence,  royal,  77  f.,  119, 

139,  394 
Restoration,  387-418;  sketch 

of,  22-23,  24;  sources,  27-28 
Ret'-e-nu,  158,  310 
Rhodes,  211,  253,  413 
Rib-ad'-di,  n,  263,  283  f.,  288 
Ribleh,  c,  405,  409,  410 
Rome,  418 
Rosetta,  c,  6 

Sahara,  4,  5,  6 
Sa-hu-re',  k,  112,  114-115 
Sais,  c,  33,  34,  46,  60,  368,  379, 

380,  387,  394,  396,  413  f. 
Sa-ke-re',  k,  287,  288 
Sak-ka'-ra,  t,  115 
Sa'latis,  k,  177 
Samal',  379 
Sa'-mos,  413 
Sandstone,  4,  5 
Sarbut  el-KhaMem,  d,  160 
Sardinians,  252,  304,  325 
Sargon,  k,  373  f.,  375 
Saul,  360 

Scarabae'us,  204,  248 
Scorpion,  k,  38 

Sculpture  (see  also  art),  earli- 
est, 30,  31,  32;  protodynas- 
tic,  43;  in  O.  K.,  96-99;  in 
M.  K.,  165;  in  Emp.,  259  ff., 
278  f.,  300,  309,  320,  339;  in 
Rest.,  393  f. 


Scythians,  p,  403,  404 
Sebek-em-saf,  k,  173 
Sebek-ho'-tep,  k,  173,  182 
Se-bek-khu',  n,  158 
Se'bek-nefru-Re',  q,  163,  170 
Seben'nytos,  15 
Seb'-ni,  n,  126 

Second  Djmasty,  40-51,  103, 

300;  length  and  date  of,  25 
Sed,  feast  of,  42 
Seir,  338 
Seka,  k,  38 

Se-ken-en-re',  k,  176,  185,  186 
Se-khem-re'  Khu-to'-we,  k,  173 
Sek'-mem,  d,  158 
Semerkhet',  k,  49 
Semites,  210-212,  263;  earliest, 

7,  29,  114;  invading  Egypt, 

29-30,  180;   in  Egypt,  ^158, 

236,  254,  317  f.,  398 
Semitic  language,  in  Egypt,  29- 

30,  253 
Sem'-neh,  t,  156,  157,  161 
Se'-nekh-ke-re',  k,  134 
Sen-jir-li',  c,  379 
Senna ch'erib,  k,  375 
Sen'-zar,  c,  232 
Sep'-lel,  k,  281,  299 
Se'-ra-pe'-um,  397 
Sesostris,  legendary,  159  f. 
Se-sos'-tris  I.,  152,  154  f.,  349 
Sesostris  II.,  155,  163 
Sesostris  III.,  155-160 
Set,  32,  41,  48,  58,  113 
Sethroite  nome,  177 
Se'-thut,  123 

Se'-ti  I.,  297-301,   302,  303, 
317 

Seti  II.,  k,  332 
Set-nakht',  k,  333 
Seventh  dynasty,  133,  186 
Samaria,  373 
Se'-we,  k,  373 
Sha'baka,  k,  374-377,  381 
Sha-ba-ta'-ka,  k,  377-378 


466 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS 


Shab-tu'-na,  t,  306 
Shalmane'ser  II.,  365 
Shalmaneser  IV.,  373 
Sha'-ru-hen',  c,  187,  188 
Sheke'lesh,  p,  329,  334 
She'mesh-E'dom,  245 
Shep-nu'-pet  (daughter  of  Osor- 

kon  III.),  371 
Shepnupet  (sister  of  Taharka), 

381,  388 
Shep-ses-kaf,  k,  111 
Sher'den,  252,  283,  304,  318, 

329  f.,  334,  335,  338 
She'shonk  I.,  360-364 
Sheshonk  IV.,  365 
Sheshonk,  n,  360 
Ships  (including  boats),  90,  106, 

122,  137,  200,  218,  230,  240, 

253  f.,  317,  334  f.,  338,  339, 

341,  354,  398,  404,  414,  415; 

eariiest,  31,  32,  33;  earhest 

sea-going,  106,  114 
Shmun,  c,  60 
Shu,  g,  57 

Shubbiluhu'ma,  see  Seplel 

Shut-tar'-na,  k,  251 

Sib'i,  373 

Sicily,  329,  334 

Sidon,  211,  252,  263,  408,  409 

Si-ha'-thor,  k,  173 

Si'keli,  p,  329,  334 

Sil'sileh,  d,  88 

Silver,  89,  92,  197,  235,  254, 

340,  405 
Si'-my-ra,  c,  211,  231,  282,  283, 

298 

Sinai,  7,  50,  91,  104,  106,  110, 
115,  120,  121,  142,  155,  160  f., 
221,  338,  348 

SindlDad,  167 

Si-nou'-he,  n,  158,  166  f. 

Sirius,  24-25,  35-36 

Siut',  c,  5,  196,  197;  nomarchs, 
134-136 

Sixth  djTiasty,  117-129 


Ske-mi-o'-phris,  q,  170 

Slaves  and  serfs,  46,  82-83,  85, 

196,  202,  236,  254,  317,  341, 

343,  395 
Smen'-des,  350 
Snef'-ru,  k,  106-107 
So,  k,  373 
Sobk,  g,  162  f. 

Society,  82-86,  145-147,  201  f., 
395 

Soil  of  Egypt,  5-6,  8-9 
So'-kar,  g,  48 
Solomon,  362,  363 
So^on,  414 
Soma'li,  p,  29,  30 
Soul,  65 

Sources,  character  of,  26-28 
Spartans,  413,  416 
Sphinx,  Great,  110-111,  247 
State,  earliest,  45;   in  O.  K., 

74-83,   113-114;  in  M.  K., 

139-147;  in  Emp.,  193-202, 

322;  in  Rest.,  394  f. 
Stone,  42,  88-89,  92;  earliest 

work  in,  31  f.,  44  f.,  105 
Suan',  c,  7 
Sudan,  7,  156 

Suez,  29,  106,  253,  316,  317; 
canal,  159,  218,  407 

Su'-tekh,  g,  176,  179,  183,  304, 
324,  339 

Syria  and  Syrians,  in  O.  K.,  90, 
106,  114;  in  M.  K.,  158  f.; 
under  Hyksos,  180,  181;  in 
Emp.,  208,  209-212,  223- 
227,  228,  235,  237,  239,  240, 
244,  247,  250,  251  f.,  263  f., 
282-284,  285,  297  f.,  299, 
303-311,  316  ff.,  319,  327, 
333-336,  337,  341,  343;  in 
Decadence,  351  f.,  375  ff., 
379  f.;  in  Rest.,  389,  398, 
402  f.,  405  f.,  406  f.,  408-410, 
415;  in  Egypt,  158,  236, 
254,  317  f.,  398,  410 


INDEX  OF  IS  AMES  AND  SUBJECTS  467 


Ta-du-khi'-pa,  q,  251 
Ta-har'-ka,  k,  376,  378-381 
Takelot'  XL,  365 
Tale,  112,  166f.,  176,  185,  237 f., 

247,  312,  320  ff.,  365 
Ta'-nis,  c,  165,  314,  315,  350; 

kings  at,  350-361 
Tanite-Amonite    period,  350- 

361;  sketch  of,  21-22,  24 
Ta-nut-a'-mon,  k,  381-382,  387, 

388 

Tapestry,  259 

Taxation,  79,  141-143,  197, 
295  f.,  395 

Tef-nakh'-te,  k,  368-371,  379 

Tef'-nut,  g,  57 

Te^enu,  p,  328  ff. 

Tell  el-Amarna,  see  Amama, 
and  Akhetaton 

Tell  el-Yehudi'yeh,  314 

Temple,  147  f.,  203,  229,  236, 
255-259,  299  f.,  314  f.,  316, 
338  f.;  earliest,  33,  37,  45, 
47  f.,  62-63;  of  sun,  113; 
terraced,  217-219;  endow- 
ments, 300,  341  ff. 

Tenth  dynasty,  134-6 

Te'-os,  413 

Te'resh,  p,  329 

Te'-ti  II.,  k,  119 

Tha'-ru,  c,  224,  295,  297,  304, 
316,  317 

Thebes,  rise  of,  135,  174,  182, 
196,  199,  204  f.;  in  Emp., 
257  ff.,  314,  315;  in  Deca- 
dence, 350,  355  f.,  357  ff., 
362,  364,  371,  380;  captured 
by  Assyrians,  380,  381  f.;  in 
Rest.,  394 

The'-kel,  333,  351,  352,  354 

The'-mer,  k,  334 

Theah,  k,  38 

Thi'-nis,  c,  16,  39,  40,  46,  120, 

125,  396 
Third  dynasty,  48,  103-7 


Thirteenth  dynasty,  173-5,  182 
Thoth,  g,  48,  59,  60,  113 
Thu'-re,  n,  209 
Thu'-tiy,  n,  238 

Thut-mo'-se  I.,  k,  208  f.,  213- 
216,  217 

Thutmose  II.,  214,  215,  216 

Thutmose  III.,  214  f.,  216-243, 
282;  1st  campaign,  223-228; 
2nd  campaign,  228  f.;  3rd 
campaign,  229;  4th  cam- 
paign, 229;  5th  campaign, 
230  ;  6th  campaign,  231;  7th 
campaign,  231;  8th  cam- 
paign, 232-234;  9th  cam- 
paign, 238  f.;  nth  and  12th 
campaigns,  239;  13th  cam- 
paign, 239;  14th  campaign, 
239;  15th  and  16th  cam- 
paigns, 239;  17th  campaign, 
239  f.;  295 

Thutmose  IV.,  247  f.,  251,  261, 
289 

Tig-lath-pi-le'-ser  I.,  k,  354 
Tiglath-pileser  III.,  366 
Tigro-Euphrates  Valley,  3,  212 
Tikh'-si,  c,  246 
Timai'os,  k,  177 
Timsah',  lake,  317 
Tiy,  q,  248,  253,  264,  270 
Tiy,  q  (wife  of  Tutenkhaton), 
289 

Tomb,  36-37,  43-44,  51,  68- 
73,  105,  106-107,  149,  150  f., 
164,  202,  204  f.,  219  f.,  272  f., 
301,  349  f.;  endowment  of, 
44,  45,  70-72 

Tom'-bos,  208 

Tosor'thros,  k,  105 

Trade,  see  Commerce 

Treasury  and  Treasurer,  45,  46, 
79,  118,  141-143,  195,  197  f., 
200 

Treaty,  299,  303,  311,  377 
Troglodytes,  50,  207 


468 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS 


Troia,  d,  88 

Tu'-nip,  c,  230,  240,  282,  305, 
310 

Tut-enkh-a'-ton,  k,  288,  289 
Tut-enkh-a'-mon,  k,  288 
Tu'-ya,  q,  301 

Twelfth  dynasty,  152-170;  date 
of,  27 

Twentieth  dynasty,  333-356 
Twenty-first  dynasty,  357-361, 
362 

Twenty-second  dynasty,  360- 
366 

Twenty-third  dynasty,  365  f., 
368 

Twenty-fourth  dynasty,  371 
Twenty-fifth  dynasty,  374-  383 
Twenty-sixth  dynasty,  387-418 
Two  Lands,  15 

Tyre,  211,  235,  298,  299,  316, 
375,  379,  408,  409,  410 

U'-Bi,  d,  263 
Uga'rit,  304 
UlMa-za,  c,  298 
Une'shek,  249 

U'-ni,  n,  120,  121,  122,  124,  125 
U'-nis,  k,  115 
Usephais',  k,  45,  49,  50 
U-ser-kaf,  k,  112,  114 
U'-ser-ke-re',  k,  119 

Valley  of  the  Kings'  Tombs, 
219  f.,  241,  247,  263,  301, 
348,  350 


Vizier,  80-81,  113-114,  119, 
144,  182,  195,  196,  197,  198, 
199,  200  f. 

Wady  A-la'-ki,  301,  302 
Wady-Halfa,  154 
Wady  Tu-mi-lat',  153,  314,  316, 
317 

Wa-wat',  p,  123,  126,  153,  155, 
241 

Wen-a'-mon,  352-4 
We'shesh,  p,  334 
White  House,  36,  197 
White  Nile,  4 

White  Wall,  c,  46,  103,  119 
World,  57 

Worshippers  of  Horus,  38-39 
48 

Writing,  91,  92-93,  281,  337  f. 
395;  earliest,  37  f.,  46  f. 

Xois,  c,  175 

Yam,  d,  123,  126 
Ya'-ru,  66,  203 
Year,  35,  46 
Ye-no'-am,  c,  331 

Za'-hi,  223,  238 
Zakar-Ba'-al,  352-4 
Zau,  n,  125 

Zed-e-ki'-ah,  k,  408,  41Q 
Zer,  k,  51,  148 
Zo'-ser,  k,  103-106 


Date  Due 


p  ft  - 

ir  20  "31 

ip  8 

An    1  "7  *QO 

■Ir  2  4 

IP  9  -  V 

